Though he hails from New Jersey, Monster Magnet leader Dave Wyndorf has the imprint of the Motor City in his musical DNA.
1998's Powertrip, the band's fourth release, was their breakthrough, a raucous distillation of Midwest garage rock aesthetics from Iggy and the Stooges to ? and the Mysterians, bolstered by Wyndorf's often witty, acerbic, and ironic lyrics.
Powertrip was so good, in fact, and so well-received by fans and critics alike, that the notion of a follow-up was no doubt daunting — which may account for the three-year wait for God Says No (though to be fair, the album was released in the U.K. late last year).
As it turns out, those fearing some kind of weird, success-freak-out left-turn from the Magnet needn't have worried, as the opener, "Melt," a gigantic slice of 'dem ol' cozmic blues, makes clear, with a juiced Wyndorf proclaiming of life, "Sometimes I dig it so much/ I could die." Even better is the anthemic garage rocker "Heads Explode", tailor-made for cruising down Detroit's roadways with the wind blowing through your mullet, stoked to the gills and oblivious to all forms of danger: "I am a pillar of salt/ You'll never be worse than me/ So get in the f---ing car/ We got us a world to bleed," Wyndorf sings, clearly reveling in his bad-ass stance. And speaking of Detroit — do you sense a theme here? — Wyndorf works his blues mojo a little more blatantly than before on cuts like the simmering, circular, demonic stomp of "Doomsday" and the stinging "Gravity Well," the latter highlighted by Ed Mundell's wonderfully greasy slide guitar.
In contrast to these rootsy explorations, the title track and the ethereal "Queen of You" highlight the band's pop side, the former song a diffuse psychedelic ballad especially strong for Wyndorf's typically perverse and ironic take on human nature: "I need some love/ To start the show/ But ask just once/ And God says no," the singer offers, before looking toward "the new frontier." But, as the set's closer, "Silver Future", proves — with Joe Calandra's sexy, slithery bassline, Jon Kleiman's syncopated drum beats, and the crashing guitars of Wyndorf, Mundell and Phil Caivano — the band is still strongest when it is adding to the proud lineage of its previously-cited musical forebears: and let's toss the MC5, whose "Kick Out the Jams" Monster Magnet has previously covered, onto that list as well.
Given this album's cover art — featuring some demonic turbo-car imagery — the timing of this Monster Magnet release probably couldn't be better, what with the concurrent release of the film Joe Dirt, with David Spade playing a white trash antihero who grooves to the sounds of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Foghat. If there's one band out there who can hang with Joe Dirt's hallowed pantheon of rawk godz, Monster Magnet is it; too bad they're not on the soundtrack.
