Promisqes are a band that are doomed never to be given a fair shake in the metal community. Being an "all girl" death metal band, people will either pass on them based on the "those of the fairer sex just can't rock" theory, or they'll be glorified simply because they happen to be female to begin with (and in turn given a positive review based on misplaced sexual anxiety). Carefully avoiding both pitfalls, my evaluation of "Monarchy of Evil" is that while it isn't a horrible album, there's nothing really worthwhile about it either. All the members are competent enough musicians, but the problem is that none of the songs are really very memorable. What's on offer here is 10 tracks of a fairly bland (and somewhat thrashy) mix of Morbid Angel/Deicide inspired death metal (a style which saw it's heyday long long ago), and as far as this sort of thing goes, Promisqes manage to pull it off, but add nothing more. I suppose that a lot of the less discerning death metal fans out there would enjoy this, but I personally found my interest waning. Like I said, this isn't bad, but it just isn't that great either. Save your pennies and go buy an Angelcorpse CD instead to see how this sort of thing can be done (properly) and still have some life injected into it. Oh, and the obligatory sexist comment : bassist Dena Turk is one highly bangable piece of ass...

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