By the time Monster Magnet put out Monolithic Baby! in 2004, they were some six years removed from the commercial-radio triumph of 1998’s Powertrip. 2000’s God Says No had been their final outing through A&M Records as the label went belly-up, and as they signed to SPV — no small shakes, but not with a major imprint’s promotional power/resources — the landscape of music had also changed around them. File sharing at the turn of the century meant that music that was out there was in a sense tossed into a yet-untamed landscape of peer-to-peer traded mp3s. The entire industry would be remade by it, and in addition to rendering FM radio largely irrelevant (print media too, I’ll note as someone who spent a decade-plus writing for now-defunct publications), many of the has-all-the-cards capitalist excesses the music business indulged in the ’90s — CD singles, $18.99 discs at Sam Goody downstairs at the Rockaway Mall, etc. — were no longer a viable model. This, as well as the rise of hip-hop as a commercial mega-enterprise with the beginnings of a next-generation listenership, would seem to have left acts like Monster Magnet in uncharted, uncomfortable territory. What on earth was a heavy rock band who had made their name in the before-times to do?

Many fell right apart, and with good reason. Monster Magnet wrote yet another collection of killer songs. Monolithic Baby! is crisp, it is clear, and it is loaded with hooks that speak to the band’s radio-edit-ready viability no less than its 63-minute runtime (for the US version) speaks to the CD era in which it was released. One would call its first four tracks — “Slut Machine,” “Supercruel,” “On the Verge” and the made-a-video-with-boobs-in-it single “Unbroken (Hotel Baby)” — a striking initial salvo, and it is, but the fact of the matter is there’s no letup from there whatsoever. “Radiation Day,” which follows directly, is an absolute highlight, and the subsequent semi-title-track “Monolithic,” with founding frontman Dave Wyndorf‘s smart, reference-laced lyrics already positioned as a generational indictment, sounds like what AC/DC might’ve become if they’d gone to college. The rush of “The Right Stuff,” its insistent rhythm and blown-out vocal, comes from Hawkwind‘s Robert Calvert but thumps like dance music — and works, somehow — and the moody “There’s No Way Out of Here” is another cover, of the band Unicorn, and momentary departure ahead of the prototypical grandiose declarations of “Master of Light” — “I’m Jesus, I’m Satan, I’m anyone you want me to be,” etc. — and the ever-righteous, always-welcome lead guitar of Ed Mundell.

As the album starts its wind-down with “Too Bad,” a jangly riff hints at Wyndorf‘s affinity for ’60s psych without really going there — long gone were the days of 1995’s Dopes to Infinity (discussed here), 1993’s Superjudge (discussed here) and 1991’s landmark  Spine of God (discussed here; reissue review here) — but provides a breather as then-drummer Michael Wildwood, who’d soon be replaced by Bob Pantella (Raging Slab, etc.), sat out ahead of the largesse harnessed in the seven-minute “Ultimate Everything.” A slower riff from Mundell and guitarist Phil Caivano, and the unmitigated swagger of Wyndorf‘s vocals over top, details of effects and layering bringing a welcome sense of weirdness and unpredictability to the proceedings as ever as the song builds to its and the album’s churning apex before capping with the mostly-instrumental “CNN War Theme,” an epilogue of sorts but a reminder now of the conflicts of that time, the US having “shocked and awed” Iraq in March 2003 and the oh-there’s-no-way-anything-could-ever-be-worse-than-this-post-9/11-ineptitude and feeding-Lockheed greed of the George W. Bush administration’s warmongering.

Simpler times.

A re-recording of “King of Mars,” aptly-titled “King of Mars 2004” revisits and adds percussion and spaciousness to that Dopes to Infinity track, and “Venus in Furs” by Velvet Underground wraps the US edition of Monolithic Baby!, which is one of the best of the many covers Monster Magnet have ever done, laced with mellotron as it is. The ability of the band at this point to be grounded in craft and so clear-headed in production while still tapping into these classic-but-outlying elements isn’t to be underappreciated. “Venus in Furs” sounds like it’s unearthing ancient secrets, and maybe that’s exactly what was happening, Wyndorf‘s middle-finger to the next generation backed by such arcane noisemaking. Maybe that’s reading too much into it. Oh well. That’s what I do. That’s why it’s fun.

Monolithic Baby! was also the point at which Monster Magnet welcomed bassist Jim Baglino (Lord Sterling) to the fold, and the final album the band would release before Wyndorf‘s much-publicized getting clean. The album that followed, 2007’s 4-Way Diablo, has been all but disavowed by the band — Wyndorf will tell you he wasn’t there when it was mixed, though I’ve always been a little unclear if he’s speaking literally or figuratively — and 2010’s Mastermind (review here), which would prove to be Mundell‘s last with the group. Massive in its production value, Mastermind took Monster Magnet to Napalm Records, where they’d remain through 2013’s return to their space-rock-roots Last Patrol (review here), 2014 and 2015’s Milking the Stars (review here) and Cobras and Fire (review here) — revisits of Last Patrol and Mastermind, the latter of which was a particular triumph — and 2018’s Mindfucker (review here), the last of which is their most recent offering.

Monolithic Baby! and Mindfucker have some commonalities in my head, and not just in that both their titles start with the letter ‘m.’ Both are rooted in Wyndorf‘s intricate songwriting — and hardly alone in the band’s catalog for that — but both would seem to hint at changes to come in the band’s sound. In the case of the earlier album, those involved matters both personal and of personnel, and as well as the kind of post-oblivion feel of 4-Way Diablo, the songs of which remain strong. I don’t know what Monster Magnet might do next — re-sign with Napalm? maybe embrace statesman-status on Nuclear Blast or Century Media? — but they were at the forefront of 2020’s pandemic reschedulings, pushing their Spring US tour themed around Powertrip to early next year which, now that we’re looking ahead to autumn, still seems ambitious.

Whatever outlet might get behind it, one hopes their studio exploration — mostly self-contained at this point with Wyndorf and Caivano, though the band is rounded out by bassist Chris Kosnik, guitarist Garrett Sweeny and the aforementioned Pantella on drums; the latter three doubling as The Atomic Bitchwax, whose new LP is out this month on Tee Pee — continues, no matter where it might lead. I’ll forever advocate for Wyndorf to get weirder, as Last Patrol and the two subsequent redux offerings did, but to be perfectly honest, I’ll take it as it comes, and as it isn’t generally what I reach for when I put on Monster Magnet, I was glad to have the excuse to revisit Monolithic Baby! and gain a newfound appreciation for its tracks.

I hope you experience the same. Thanks for reading.

—

Ups and downs this week. Days with The Pecan and Puppy Omi are hard. He hits her, she nips at him. Through the gate to the kitchen, he swats, she jumps. What a mess. I yelled at him hard on Tuesday I guess it was, held his face in my hands and made him look at me — I’ve been concerned about his eye contact since he was like three months old — and told him his behavior was unacceptable, and there followed an argument with The Patient Mrs. about my being too aggressive and shaming. I had counterpoints. They don’t really matter. She gave me a book recommendation, I started reading and continued to feel awful until I fell asleep.

They found a rehab facility for my father and at the hospital, where he’d been for a month. They were waiting for a negative COVID test to move him. The results didn’t come back in time, but they moved him anyway. They sent me some medicaid form to fill out. I’m not sure I have the legal authority to do that. So yeah. That’s still fun.

I’m also starting to hate this puppy. Strange to think of three weeks ago when I was ONLY trying to raise a toddler with speech issues in a global pandemic as being easy days, but having this dog has made everything more difficult. She whines. She barks. She pisses on the floor. She bites. And indeed, every time The Pecan gets within arm’s reach, he tries to smack her. I mean, I get it, but we can’t really have that in the long run. I don’t know how long we’re supposed to let the experiment go before calling it “nice shot” and moving on with our lives, but if it was today, that’d be fine. I have to take her to the vet in like 40 minutes. Maybe I can convince them to keep her.

Tonight is the Clutch Doom Saloon thing, which if I can get a pass I’ll review, otherwise might try to do the Dunbarrow one, but it’s kind of one or the other in terms of my available time to write. I have another premiere for Monday, so the day’s already good and full. Only so many hours and seemingly fewer all the time. I’ve been starting to transition back to waking up on either side of 4AM again — taking the dog out overnight has actually facilitated, since I was up — so that at least helped yesterday.

There’s other stuff next week. I can’t think clearly enough to remember what. Sorry. Probably more reviews slated than I’ll have energy to write. So it goes.

Alright. I gotta go. Great and safe weekend. Gimme show at 5 Eastern if you can listen. Thanks either way.

FRM.

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Tags: Long Branch, Monolithic Baby!, Monster Magnet, Monster Magnet Monolithic Baby!, New Jersey, SPV Records

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2020 at 8:53 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.