MONSTER MAGNET – 'Last Patrol' (2013)

28 October 2013
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I really like the feeling of sweating like a student before an exam when I am to hear a new album from an important band and then find myself dancing hysterically from the greatness of the music. The experience has shown that often the bands that have been around long enough put out really dumb records from a moment ahead. Thank God, Dave Wyndorf gave me a refreshing kick in the ass in the direction of violet cosmic glows.

“Last Patrol” is not the last album by Monster Magnet, as Dave Wyndorf recently claimed in an interview. “Yet it sounds provocative, isn’t it?” Well the only provocation I find in the record is the one to blow my head in euphoria.

Now without Ed Mundell on the board of the shuttle the anxiety that the guitar might of “Mastermind” (2010) won’t be here, disappears with the speed of light in a black hole – Garrett Sweeny and Phil Caivano (mostly Phil) have poured  beautiful and and shiny-psychedelic guitar layers that seamlessly made me look at my "Dopes To Infinity" and "God Says No" CDs. The severity of the previous record still throbs of the tracks in the "Last Patrol", but somehow makes the songs to slippery vibrate in a classic Monster Magnet psychedelia.

“I Live Behind The Clouds” starts softly , almost whispering before bursting in typical for the band epic and until the end of the song you feel this unmistakable euphoria which grabs your lungs as you listen and you don’t feel how you’ve turned the volume up to the neighborly tolerance (or above but fuck them).

And then there's "The Last Patrol" with its nearly ten-minute trip through time and space that makes you feel like in a futuristic cartoon rocket that flies among bright stars, picturesque  planets and colorful projections of the Milky Way, with speed from which the level of adrenaline jumps along with body hair and skin hurts from the goose bumps as the song speeds, speeds, speeds...

And then comes the cover in the album. Well, every fucking time Monster Magnet decide to do a cover, they turn relatively unpopular songs from the (more distant) past, in an absolute blast of testosterone rock explosion. In this case, it is the beautiful "Three Kingfishers" by Donovan, which mutate from an early folk-psyche with sitar into an epic volcano eruption with disastrous consequences...

Now, why should I spoil your fun of the trip "Last Patrol"?

Get the CD, the LP or  MP3s from torrent trackers, whatever. But listen to it loud and keep in mind that there’s an hour of awesome, pure-blooded, pulsating, melodic, riffy and epic soul-penetrating rock'n'roll from one of the greatest bands in the scene ever.
 

Source: radiotangra.com