Monster Magnet: Monster Magnet EP (1990)

Mention stoner rock icons Monster Magnet to Average Joe Rocker and he’ll probably remember their lone hit single, “Space Lord,” maybe an earlier album like Dopes to Infinity or Superjudge, but few know of the band’s debut EP, released 30 years ago by Germany’s Glitterhouse Records.

Heck, I didn’t know of it myself, until the band’s unofficial sixth member, Tim Cronin (also of The Ribeye Brothers), slipped me a copy on CD during the 1998 Powertrip tour, having recognized a true fan who just happened to work for their label, A&M Records.

As he would later tell me in an interview for Diffuser.fm, “When we started Monster Magnet, we just wanted to do music that we wanted to listen to [and] we all loved old garage rock, the Stooges and old psych music.”

“Dave [Wyndorf, vocals, guitar] was well versed on ‘70s space rock/hard rock; John [McBain, guitar] was also solid on old hard rock [and] ‘60s/‘70s British rock; and I was a fan of stuff that was coming out at the time: the Screaming Trees’ Invisible Lantern was a big record for us, and Mudhoney too.”

“When ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ came out it felt like we had kindred spirits on the West Coast. There was also a lot of U.K. stuff that was kicking our ass: Spacemen 3, Loop, the Walking Seeds, the Telescopes and the real early Skullflower stuff, especially their Birthdeath EP.”

Most all of these influences came together on this primal EP, which marked Cronin’s transition from drums to bass guitar (replaced by Tom Diello), then into stage management (a.k.a. Dope/Lights/Center of the Universe), and found Magnet germinating in corrosive, fuzz-and-feedback-laden extremes.

This is made all the more evident by three songs that would surface again, in “tamer” forms, on ensuing LPs, namely the swampy “Snake Dance,” opioid/nitrous oxide trip “Nod Scene” (both recut for the following year’s Spine of God), and the propulsive “Tractor” (finally revisited on the aforementioned Powertrip). 

Not so the tracks on side two, which included the excellent “Freak Shop U.S.A.” (very Mudhoney, but very excellent), the B-Movie slasher “Lizard Johnny,” featuring vocals from Cronin, and, exclusive to the CD pressing, the less distinctive “Murder.”

All in all, this material was deceptively primitive, sonically-speaking, but beyond sophisticated in its fusion of countless inspirational sources, just as Cronin told me; so it’s hardly surprising, in retrospect, that Dave Wyndorf wound up guiding Monster Magnet down so many musical paths over the next few decades.

“All freaks go to hell!”

30 Days Shipping Challenge - Day 26: A pairing that you hated and ended up loving.

John McBain & Natalie Buchanan (One Life To Live)