As a writer on a fairly busy website, I get introduced to new music on a daily basis and I still get a buzz out of finding a new artist who sets that creative spark flowing. However, I also maintain love affairs with certain bands that have been with me for many years. One such band is Monster Magnet, a band whom I discovered late in the day thanks to a good friend of mine and to whom I have been in thrall ever since. I’m not quite so blinded by the band that I can’t see that there are highs and lows within their collected works, but I am of the opinion that Monster Magnet have yet to release a bad album and I am further of the opinion that Monster Magnet’s last two albums (‘Last patrol’ and it’s utterly stunning sister album ‘milking the stars’) are amongst the best work the band have ever done. You can put any spin on it you like, the cleaned up and fired up Monster Magnet that we have now is one hell of a band. Nonetheless I was surprised that the band would follow up a reinterpretation of a recent album with a reinterpretation of a slightly older one, even one as good as ‘Mastermind’ unquestionably was and, since the record’s announcement, I have been waiting with some anticipation for its arrival. Whereas ‘milking the stars’ arguably eclipsed ‘last patrol’, it was harder to imagine ‘cobras and fire’ doing the same for ‘mastermind’, and yet the same train of inspiration that ran through ‘milking the stars’ is evident here and ‘cobras and fire’ proves that lightning can indeed strike twice.
Opening with ‘she digs that hole’, the song is reborn with a sleazy groove that drips with fluids and lascivious intent. “Her name is Cova and she’s my porno wife!” smirks Dave as the band do their best to wring a few extra x-rated drops from their instruments, and we’re on our way into the playboy pad of a rock star so bloated on sex and drugs that rock ‘n’ roll may not even be on the agenda anymore. Like walking into the penthouse of a latter-day Elvis, signs of excess are everywhere and you just know you’re going to bleed before the night is done. ‘Watch me fade’ (which only appears a bonus track on the original album) is reborn as an organ-drenched tribute to the doors that captures the raw energy of that band live (check out ‘live at the bowl ’68 if you don’t believe me) and which more than justifies its presence in the revamped running order with Phil Caivano’s fiery soloing and Jeff Levine’s organ work. Diggin even deeper into the patchouli, ‘Mastermind ‘69’ improves upon the original version by plunging it into the heady Eastern world that saw The Beatles crafting hallucinatory gems like ‘within you without you’ only to dip the guitars in a molten fire that would have sent the fab four scurrying for cover. ‘Cobras and fire (hallucination bomb)’ reconstructs the original album’s opening track as a spacey masterpiece that slithers and slide in and out of the conscious realm, with Robert Ryan’s electric tamboura adding much to the exotic atmosphere of the piece. At nine minutes it’s a mini-space-epic, but as with ‘milking the stars’, the expanded run times only offer the band the more space to explore their sound and the result is a hallucinatory trip that is devilishly addictive. Similarly the dark ‘gods, punks and the everlasting twilight’ expands upon the original’s remit with tremolo guitars and a beautifully naked from a vulnerable-sounding Dave that edges the song subtly into bad trip territory.
Now awash with piano and synth, ‘the titan’ is a trip that echoes around the interior of an abandoned spaceship (think the creepy discovery one from 2001), slowly building an eerie atmosphere that is alive with unresolved tension. Reminiscent of Philip Glass, ‘the titan’ is quite a departure for Monster Magnet, but it provides the perfect cocoon from which ‘when the planes fall from the sky (sitar and psyche version)’ can emerge as a near-perfect stoner trip that underscores all the reasons I fell in love with Monster Magnet in the first place. A lengthy, fast paced psyche trip, ‘Ball of confusion’ is another song that draws upon the likes of the doors with its breathless pace and dark poetry, and as the riffs pile up and the vocals lose themselves in a wall of reverb, the song tears away from the fabric of reality and draws the listener ever further into the dark netherworld that Monster Magnet have always hinted at in their music. The instrumental ‘Time machine’ is, in contrast, a moment of surprising beauty that sees Monster Magnet experimenting with progressive rock and producing some wonderful music as a result. It leaves only ‘I live behind the paradise machine’, which arrives far too quickly, to round out the album with one last head trip. An eerie track that arrives wreathed in smoke and which drifts in and out of focus, it’s the perfect conclusion to an album that continuously challenges the senses.
In the wrong hands, the concept of reinterpreting songs could be a redundant exercise at best and an exercise in tedium at worst. However, it seems that the process of reworking the catalogue has driven Dave Wyndorf and his band to new peaks of creativity and whilst ‘cobras and fire’ is a neat sister album to the original, it also stands alone in its own psychedelic world. The songs here, expanded, manipulated and twisted into new shapes, are cast in a whole new light and the results are magical. Monster Magnet remain a truly special band, unafraid to experiment and never afraid to do the unexpected and ‘Cobras and fire’ is as thrilling and as spacey a work as the band have ever put their name to. ‘Mastermind’? Masterpiece would be more fitting.
