- If you’ve even seen the second instalment of The Decline of Western Civilisation, aptly titled, The Metal Years, you can pretty much guess the formula this new Monster Magnet record. Obnoxiously named Mindfucker the New Jersey group have distilled hard rock’s most potent clichés and somehow managed to make them both inoffensive and acerbic in the same passing motion. Why hard rock has somehow managed to drag its decomposing corpse out of the era before everyone realised that smoking gave you cancer and systematic misogyny was seen to be not only something to aspire to but as a respected part of the music industry is still beyond me.
Brimming with over-driven guitars that emulate the L.A. sound that Monster Magnet quite clearly worship, the riffs are as repetitive as they are awkward. Couple that with the constant soloing in the most mundane passages, it truly comes across as a desperate attempt to inject some life into an otherwise flaccid set of songs: it’s results into one of the most lacklustre albums I’ve listened to in years. It lacks the tongue in cheek selfawareness of Cosmic Psychos, the innovative guitar work and variation of The Damned Things or Kvelertak, or even the monstrous weed infused size of Red Fang or Conan. Operating at a pace that rarely drops beneath a head banging appropriate beat, Mindfucker is a lazy rehashing of consistently recycled tropes. The sharpest of the many thorns in my side whilst struggling through this record is the vocal performance and the accompanying lyrics. Nothing but self-righteous pseudo-battles marinate indistinct vocals that could be pulled from any hard rock record to come out in the last twenty years, and you’d be hard pressed to allocate them to Monster Magnet in particular. Awkwardly processed with jarring reverb and some unbecoming filters, they’ve attempted, however unsuccessfully, to make the vocals seem like Chancellor Palpetine’s hologram voice in Attack of The Clones.
Not unlike Attack of The Clones though, there is some brief respite in amongst an incessant amount of drivel. The tense and minimal introduction to I’m God is somewhat bearable until the rest of the instruments swing their proverbial cocks into the mix and revert back to abrasive swagger, while the Tom Waits tinged Drowning gives off some vague glimpses of variation until you realise that it’s essentially a song that howls resentment against Jesus worse than diaries from a Catholic schoolboy.
Why hard rock has managed to maintain some sort of cultural relevance in the past three or so decades, is something I can’t comprehend. Mindfucker is genuinely some of the most uninspired and middle of the road tripe I’ve come across in years. Hang up your leather jackets and take off your aviators. It’s time to grow up and move on.
- Matthew Lynch.