NOTE: Regular readers of this blog will notice I’ve been somewhat absent of late…the reasons for this are several, mainly the fact that I’m working to finish the revisions on a new novel. But tonight I’m so excited that I just had to share this post from my personal blog with my Black Gate pals…

Oh, my brothers and sisters. There comes a time when all the Rock Dreams and Psychedelic Fantasies of your life emerge and blend with a shifting reality paradigm that manifests something truly Great and Special. There is a time when the Cosmos opens its starry mouth and smiles at us, spitting glorious glowing meteors through transistorized frequencies. There comes a time when the Sonic Threshold dilates and gives birth to a continuum of swirling planetoids and the Music of the Spheres resonates like colliding asteroids to thunder in the chambers of the mind with the pulsing of rogue supernovae…and we must open our ears and let the Big Beautiful Universe spill into our consciousness on waves of Almighty Sound…

That time has come around again…the time of a brand-new album release from the gods of psychedelic space-rock, the great and powerful MONSTER MAGNET. In an age of declawed radio, corporate-manufactured psuedo-rock, and the celebration of mediocrity that is mainstream music, the MONSTER rises once more from its crucible of dead stars to light up the cosmos with a new dose of sonic fury.

The new album is called MASTERMIND. The first single is “Gods and Punks”, and the video tells a lurid tale of a down-and-out supervillain roaming the back alleys of Los Angeles trying to recapture his lost glory.

Check it out right here.

 

The album is slated for release on October 25. Legions of MonMag fans across the world will be eagerly awaiting the disc, myself included. This is one of The Great Rock Bands of Our Time, people. The NEW YORK TIMES actually calls them a “mind-expansion team.” If you haven’t discovered them, now is your chance. If you’re already a MonMag fan, you know the deal. Get your speakers fixed and get ready to fly, brothers and sisters. Brother Dave and his cosmic crew are back in town…

Frontman Dave Wyndorf recently spoke to thesilvertongueonline.com about the new album: “It’s a big, beefy ball of demented anthems and power rock. The music itself is exaggerated and muscular. Like classic rock gone insane! Giant hooks, giant sounds. The rockers are direct and intense. The ballads, trippy and strange. It’s guitar heaven…the lyrics read like a fever-dream of life in the 21st century. Cynicism, optimism, satire, sex, deluded fantasies and dead-on reality. They’re all here – sometimes even in the same song!”

Here is the “Mastermind” track list. The titles alone give you a glimpse of Dave’s cosmo-psycho-mythic sensibilities:

01. Hallucination Bomb
02. Bored With Sorcery
03. Dig That Hole
04. Gods and Punks
05. The Titan Who Cried Like A Baby
06. Mastermind
07. 100 Million Miles
08. Perish In Fire
09. Time Machine
10. When The Planes Fall From The Sky
11. Ghost Story
12. All Outta Nothin’

 

In my book, MonMag’s 1995 album DOPES TO INFINITY is one of the all-time great rock albums. It is the SGT. PEPPERS of post-Black Sabbath heavy metal. While the band has had some lineup changes since that album’s sheer sonic perfection was released upon the world, the core of singer/songwriter Dave Wyndorf and lead guitarist Ed Mundell remains. I’ve seen these guys in concert three times and they have blown my mind every single time. Their live shows are visual and sonic feasts of rock and roll decadence with custom-made films running throughout the performance to accent the audio juggernaut that is their stage show. As long as MonMag is alive, ROCK can never truly be dead.

It’s a shame American audiences don’t appreciate them quite as much as Eurpoean audiences seem to (except for the late 90s hit “Space Lord”, which was all over radio for a couple of years back in the day). But Europe has a longer memory when it comes to great music and great bands. America is too much a slave to the “new”, the “trendy”, and the “popular.” Ugh.

 

 

Give me the independent bands that are free to explore their own sounds without catering to some marketing department’s demands. Give me undiluted power chords that rattle the walls and lyrics that make my brain spin in its casing. Give me raw energy and Marshall stacks and burning guitars and radioactive daydreams and cosmic visions and a planet-of-the-apes-and-a-third-eye-kind-of-thing.

Give me MONSTER MAGNET. 

And crank it the eff UP.

Peace!
John

PS. MONSTER MAGNET has a brand-new Official Website at www.zodiaclung.com