Monster Magnet - "Love Monster" (Wrong Way Records WWR-001, US 2001)
From Aural Innovations #17 (September 2001)
You want to hear a very strange CD, buy this one. These are Dave Wyndorf's personal home 4 track demos from the summer of 1988. Dave is playing all the instruments. Some of this is cool and some of it is pretty raw and ugly stuff. I think Dave was still recovering from his stint at trying out commercial heavy metal but had not quite got into the drugs that heavily yet. 'Love Monster' is a pretty simple tune that only really gets good at the end when Dave starts freaking with the vocals and the riff gets very heavy. 'Warhippie' starts with those 80's heavy metal style chorus vocals and starts pretty lame but Dave has a bit of a freakout at the end. 'Poster' follows and is a strange tune. Dave sings in a very stoned voice about a poster on the wall. 'Atom Age Vampire' has very poor sound quality with the low end just sounding like rumble. 'Brighter than the Sun' has a very annoying drum machine track but you can see where Dave is trying to go with the track. Quite upbeat after the very dark Atom Age track. These last two tracks are where Dave took the drugs. I never knew he had covered Five years ahead of my Time by the Third Bardo way back then. Monster Magnet went on to record this during the Dopes session. Great song and presented in a very raw form, quite close to the original. 'Snoopy' is the last song on the CD and very strange drug stuff for sure. The everyday Monster Magnet fan won't dig this at all but if you want to see where it all started, try to find a copy of this. Only 3000 made!
Reviewed by Scott Heller