Monster Magnet Album: “Monolithic Baby”

As the Monster Magnet website declares: Rock Is Alive! Aside from MM and a few others, I can't think of too many bands who can make that claim these days. With all the sound-alike down-tuned no-solo "rock" out there these days, Monolithic Baby! is a welcome return to old-school hard rock. It is just a great hard-rocking, wacky, fun listen, with all the good stuff you expect from Magnet: pounding rhythm section, overdriven guitars, and some shredding solos, capped off by Dave Wyndorf's wacky view of the world. Definitely not as psychedelic as Spine Of God or even Dopes To Infinity, but overall, I think this is arguably their best work to date.

My song picks: Supercruel, Radiation Day, Monolithic and Master Of Light.

Monolithic Baby, the latest rock effort by southern New Jersey's Monster Magnet, sprung out of a random singularity that unraveled in the wispy fabric of space. It was born of a cyclopian rock-god dog-tired of puerile wailings layered over commerci-pop riffs. Monolithic Baby sprouted out of a meteorite that innocuously planted itself in a tract of Bruce Springsteen's backyard farmland in Colt's Neck. And Dave Wyndorf, the story goes, cloaked in dark garb, gained possession of this alien growth under shady, possibly criminal circumstances. And he heaved the monolithic spacerock into the sky. This tumbling mass bucked gravity and escaped the atmosphere's outer skin and inexplicably, Monolithic Baby reversed course and pierced again the exosphere on May 25th, 2004 and clobbered the North American continent with a Nagasaki-sized wollop. Monolithic Baby is pure metal wrapped inside a white-evil husk, set upon a plinth in Satan's museum of inspired artifacts. And Monolith Baby is more than that. It's the kind of album that you can leave spinning in your CD player at a listening volume at magnet midnight, and you can go to bed to it, and splay out your limbs in an X-marks-this-landing-pad-for-Wyndorf's-mindsplash, and saunter into your dreams drugged on the arresting sound of genuine, legitimate hard rock. So buy this freaking album if you need a transmutation of soul. Or if this age of terror and over-consumption got you down. Or if you just want to dream again.

Monster Magnet has done it again!!!

I can't get enough of any Monster Magnet CD and this one just got added to my necessary car Magnet stash along with the others. Dave Wyndorf and company are sorely underated by the suits but that's ok by me. They keep ROCK real instead.

Definitely downplays the psychedelic side of the band. More of a straightforward rock album. The lack of psychedelia kind of makes it sound flatter than previous albums, but it is a really good rock record anyway you cut it. Still has the heavy riffage and similar themes. I only have Superjudge and Dopes to Inifinity and it is definitely closer to Dopes of the two records, but still less psychedelic. So if you're into the band for the psychedelic side this probably won't appeal to you as much as earlier releases.

This album smokes!! (pun intended!) It manages to have more "hits" than most other contemporary rock records, and yet is far from being a sellout record. Check out "Supercruel", "Master of Light", and "Unbroken (Hotel Baby)" on this disc and you'll see what I mean (if there is any justice in the world, these songs will become rock radio staples).

For over 15 years, these guys have consistently put out quality recordings, each one topping the last. "Monolithic Baby" takes them to the next level, and yet is consistent with the stoner vision that they've maintained throughout their career.

I'm surprised to hear other reviewers say that "God Says No" was a disappointment. That album is an underappreciated masterpiece as well. "Monolothic Baby" is a logical follow-up to that record, even while it contains nods to their past. Get this disc!