One band to rule them all! This past Saturday, May 25, America's top unsigned five bands from across the country shared the stage in Los Angeles, CA at The Viper Room for the national final of Wacken Metal Battle USA. The night was filled with brutality, debauchery and pure musicianship among them all.

Battling the night away, the final featured Dissentience (Winners, East Coast), Monarch (Winners, West Coast), Nahaya (Winners, Texas), Toxic Ruin (Winners, Chicago), Violence System (Winners, Atlanta) whom were selected from over a hundred bands that participated in this year's 2019 battles held in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, San Diego, and Los Angeles.

Judged by a panel of metal industry that consisted of Alex Distefano (LA Weekly), Marco Barbieri (M-Theory Audio) and DJ Will (KNAC.com), only one band could be selected to represent the nation at this year's international Wacken Battle at the 30th edition of Wacken Open Air. The battle has been part of the festival since 2004 and has had over 40 countries participate since its inception. This year's American champion crowned to represent the nation is San Diego thrashers, Monarch. They will be joining metal bands from 29 other countries battling it out under the Bullhead City Circus from July 31 to August 2 for one to conquer them all. The top 5 bands will be rewarded with material and cash prizes.

The band comments: "Without a doubt, this has been a journey for the Monarch camp and everyone involved. We are beyond thrilled to have won Wacken Metal Battle USA in 2019 to represent the United States of America! We have put 15 years of our blood, sweat, and tears into this band to make it what it is today. And we know that every band up until this moment have done the same. We would like to thank the fans for always being there and believing in what we do. We wouldn't be here without the fans. To Eric Dow to have taken it upon himself to even have this opportunity, to begin with, and to the Brick by Brick, Viper Room, Andrew Bansal of Metal Assault for helping make this a reality for us and Jon Asher of Asher Media Relations for all his help with all the battles. We can't imagine how hard it was for the judges to make a decision every time one of these epic battles went down and to them, we have much respect.

"Best believe that Monarch will be bringing the fire and metal from the United States to Wacken to show them what the USA metal scene has got. And we will be going as hard as we can to show the metal heads attending that we want to win this one! We are forever humbled to have gotten this far and now it's time to strategize our victory in Germany.

"Big Thanks to everyone involved that put together such an amazing year of metal!"