Hymn to the Immortal Wind

Mono's fifth album was recorded and mixed by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago in June and November 2008 and mastered by John Golden. MusicBrainz gives March 4, 2009 for Japan and March 24 for Europe, South Korea and the US. It is a concept album, with a short story enclosed with the CD; the orchestra was conducted by Dave Max Crawford and Paul Von Mertens and the strings and flutes numbered about 27 players. Goto's guitars, Kunishi's bass, piano, harpsichord and glockenspiel, Takada's drums and tympani and Yoda's guitars and Hammond B3 organ are the band's parts. Alternative Press reportedly quoted Goto saying that the songs and the chapters of the story are based on each other; we could not open that page, so we cannot quote it.

Echoes's John Diliberto called it the soundtrack to a fable-like story scored for full orchestra. The scores listed on Wikipedia are Metacritic 75 out of 100, AllMusic 4.5 of 5, Alternative Press and Kerrang 4 of 5, NME 8 of 10, Pitchfork 7.0 and PopMatters 7. An anniversary edition (TRR348, June 14, 2019 by MusicBrainz) marked the band's 20th year and the album's tenth, remastered from the original analog master tapes by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, with a die-cut double LP jacket and seven interchangeable cover inserts.