monster magnet live

On a wet and windy November, there were precisely two people in the queue to enter the Garage forty minutes prior to doors opening. That said more about the weather than it did about the desire of Scots to see stoner rock legends, Monster Magnet. Before that happened though, Turbowolf came on and gave a short, energetic, chaotic, but ultimately dull set. They tried hard, and both of the fanclub members enjoyed it, but most of the crowd were left a bit bemused.

Monster Magnet were bringing their Dopes to Infinity album to the live set. Nothing unusual in that, bands bring their albums on tour all the time; it’s an essential marketing tool, but Dopes to Infinity was released in 1995, which is definitely odd. Arguably their best album (not convinced about that one personally), there is no doubt it was probably the defining album of their early years and shaped much of what has been subsequently produced. As frontman Dave Wyndorf said, ‘bringing ‘Dopes to Infinity’ on tour is like a dream come true’.

For many of the packed out audience, true Monster Magnet fans, singing along to classics, that is probably accurate. For this writer, unfamiliar with that back catalogue, it was easy just to get on and enjoy the music.

They managed to stretch eleven songs into a full hour plus of play time, aided in part by the ten minute intro Vertigo, imbued with a sense of menace on the live works that isn’t there on the studio work. Then they finished off the album on the first song on the encore with Negasonic Teenage Warhead before settling into some more contemporary songs, although only one teaser from the new album, that being Hallucination Bomb.

The crowd seemed a little more mature than the usual metal crowd; hardly any under 25s and almost no teenagers, although this didn’t stop the moshpit forming for Space Lord, but it does indicate an aging target market for Monster Magnet. The appeal for this particular show, however, pulled in people from Northern Ireland and the Hebrides, all of whom had flown in to see a once in a lifetime experience of Monster Magnet performing a seminal album, in its entirety, live. Ok, they’re doing the show twice in the UK, but you know what I mean.

The band played and performed very tightly as a unit, although there didn’t seem to be much on stage interaction, and crowd interaction was minimal until the encore, with Dave consistently turning his back to the crowd to play guitar or fiddle with some effects device mounted just in front of the drums.

Overall, we had ninety minutes of top quality hard and heavy rock that lived up to the preview billing of ‘a complete trip from end to end’.

by Alan Thomson