Panto season already, then. As the skies darken and the smoke rises, Monster Magnet rise again for their fifth album, sinister emissaries of '70s hard rock like your mother used to bake.
The guitar tech's called Dan Druff, the timeless majesty of Slingerland drums and Zildjian cymbals are given due thanks. All hell broadly breaks loose around track five that's 'Kiss Of The Scorpion'.
So unreconstructed they're positively Cro-magnon, the Magnet remain a supremely ludicrous band. By modern metal standards, 'God Says No' (classic title, dudes) is a bit wussy and melodic, more interested in psychedelic flourishes and stoner twangs rather than steely cyber-grunge. Equally, the lyrical concerns chiefly impending planetary destruction and how it'll affect singer Dave Wyndorf getting a shag - are aptly summarised in the line, "It's absolute apocalypse you stupid f**king cow," from 'Doomsday'.
All well and dubious. Still, even though this fifth album isn't quite in the, ahem, class of 1998's 'Powertrip', it's hard not to be carried along by the loving accuracy of the detailing, the sheer theatrical excess of the whole enterprise. Bear in mind Wyndorf looks like a garden gnome in hell's angel drag, and parts of this seething, grinding, often rather fine album sound like Urge Overkill, and the picture becomes clearer.
'God Says No' makes old-school rock the life, the riffs, the trappings, the studded leather codpieces - look like a very good joke. Exactly who's laughing, of course, is not quite as clear. Scary, huh?
