THE MOON TOWER
Monster Magnet
O2 Academy 2, Birmingham 21/05/2017
If you'd never heard Monster Magnet before, you'd have a good idea what to expect walking into the Birmingham O2 Academy's mid-sized venue. Love's Forever Changes album is coming through the PA, serving as the pre-gig soundtrack, and the stage is packed full of the sort of cool gear you'd have seen on sale for peanuts in the used section of your local music superstore in the 1980s - a couple of JMP-era Marshall stacks, two road worn Gibson Les Pauls, a CBS-era Strat, and a Ludwig Vistalite drum kit not too dissimilar from the one John Bonham played in the The Song Remains The Same. Yes, tonight's going to be a trip.
As the lights go down, the sunny Los Angeles vibes of Love are replaced with the pummelling opening riff of Dopes To Infinity and we're off into the cosmos. Dave Wyndorf stalks the stage, delivering his vocals with a fire belying his 60 years, while guitarists Phil Caivano and Garrett Sweeny deliver the goods on Radiation Day, Powertrip and Medicine
with all the nonchalant cool you'd expect.
The set draws from a good number of Monster Magnet's albums, not just their arguable creative peak in the mid to late 1990s, but strangely their three most recent releases are ignored completely. However, they do premiere a new song Mindfucker, which shows promising signs for the new album, tentatively scheduled for a summer 2017 release.
Although it's good to see the band up close in a fairly small venue, I can't help thinking that the show deserves a bigger stage. There's a projector running throughout the set, displaying Pink Floyd circa 1966-like bubble and lava lamp visuals, interspersed with images that presumably relate to the songs, but there's so little flat space available on the rear wall of the stage that these are completely lost.
As the set progresses, there's a good deal of spacey improvisation; both guitarists making use of various pedals, especially in the extended version of the classic Dinosaur Vacuum from the Superjudge
album, which briefly visits the band's cover of Hawkwind's Brainstorm, also from Superjudge. The set ends with three songs from the classic A&M trilogy of albums in the 1990s - Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Tractor and Space Lord.
If tonight's attendance and enthusiasm is anything to go by, Monster Magnet may well be playing a venue more suited to their galaxy-sized show next time around. Roll on the new album!
Setlist: Dopes To Infinity / Radiation Day / Powertrip / Mindfucker / Medicine / Look to Your Orb for the Warning / Twin Earth / I Want More / Dinosaur Vacuum + Brainstorm / Spine of God + American Pie / Encore: Negasonic Teenage Warhead / Tractor /
Space Lord