MONARCHY

MONARCHY is first of all a team. A team of people that do what they like most and that is play together and give it all out there on the stage. Some love it, some don`t, some will, some won`t, but at the end of the day, we go to sleep knowing, that there are people out there, listening to our music, and that is the best feeling one man can ever have!”

Inception – Death – Revival

The Romanian progressive-metal band Monarchy was formed in the early 90`s by Iulian Rob (Lead Guitar) and Marian Leusteanu (Rhythm Guitar, who later on, took the bass part). In the incipient stages, Monarchy went through some turbulent times due to the massive turnover of band members and in 1998 seized its activity only to be reborn in 2009. With the arrival of Dragos Cretu as a lead singer and Cornel Stefan taking the keyboards part, the band strengthened its formula and started working on new material. (Dragos Cretu – Lead Vocals, Iulian Rob – Lead Guitar, Marian Leusteanu – Bass, Geani Matei – Drums, Cornel Stefan – Keyboards, Eddy Moraru – Rhythm Guitar)

Legacy and Musical Style

If initially the bands musical style was based on the late 80`s and early 90`s heavy-metal with trash and speed influences of bands like Metallica, Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, after the reunion Monarchy took a new direction towards more complex compositional structures merged with the powerful guitar driven sound of metal and the diverse philosophical inner reflecting lyrics by Dragos blended in a modern progressive metal style.

Jamming – 2009

In August 2009, Monarchy released the self produced debut EP entitled “Jamming” containing four tracks (Earthquake, a dynamic, straight to the heart song but with unexpected turns of the rhythm and sound, Endless Journey a sensitive but yet power ballad that reflects Monarchy`s past trials and tribulations with a positive message in the end, Soul Insanity – a complex elaborate composition taking you from a progressive mellow start with the grandeur of the classic piano to killing guitar riffs and virtuoso bass and drum parts only to end in the same piano mellow note, Tribute is a devastating full throttle muscle song written as a testimonial to all the bands that influenced Monarchy`s music during the course of the years). Even though, the recordings didn`t benefit of the latest state-of-the-art studio equipment, being done in the band`s own rehearsal studio, the EP has been positively reviewed by the critics, being marked as a positive influx of freshness into the Romanian musical ground and Dragos` voice often being emphasized as one of the best male metal voices of Romania and compared to Geoff Tate`s of Queensryche.

2009-2011 Activity – releasing first ground shaking music video: Earthquake(June 2011)

After the release of “Jamming”, Monarchy has been very active, taking over the Romanian rock stage, playing numerous shows in clubs and outdoors, at rock festivals around the country, and these earned Monarchy a growing fan base in the underground rock scene. In September 2010 Monarchy wins 2nd place at Maximum Rock Contest, even though, they were battling more mainstream oriented bands.
On June 2011, Monarchy releases their first official music video for the song Earthquake in the TV Show “Face 2 Face” on Antena2 hosted by Cosmina Pasarin. The music video was comprised entirely of live footage taken from the band`s concerts and was very well received by the fans and the media. In the same TV Show where it has been released, Earthquake wins the voting contest against another music video by a very popular pop-rock band in Romania with 87% of the votes.

Eddy`s departure, arrival of the blonde miracle

Eddy Moraru leaves Monarchy by mutual decision because of external issues and him not being able to fit in with the bands musical pace. They all called it quit as to not ruin the friendship they all have to one another.

About the same time, Dana Olteanu joins Monarchy taking the backing-vocals part and also the toughest role of being the only female in the band, only 3 weeks before the biggest event in the history of the group.

Rock The City Festival – Bucharest, June 1-3, 2011

On July 2nd, Monarchy plays the Rock The City Festival – Bucharest 2011, sharing the same stage with names like Judas Priest, Whitesnake, Hatebreed, Sabaton, Therapy? or Prodigy where they were considered a revelation by the viewers, critics and also people in the entertainment industry.

Present and future

After the Rock The City Festival, Monarchy was joined by Oana Purcareanu (PR D&D East Entertainment) as PR, Booking Agent and also having an active role in the management of the band.
Currently Monarchy works on their first full length album which, according to the band`s plans, is scheduled to be released by fall 2011. The guys refer to it as being music that no other Romanian rock band has done before.
Stay tuned…