After dauntlessly touring themselves to death resulted in
\nMonster Magnet’s
\nPowertrip<\/i> reaching Gold status in the States, the band’s
\nvocalist Dave Wyndorf found himself building on the hard rock
\nformula of that release as he wrote the songs for the band’s
\nfollow-up album,
\nGod Says No<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The late ’90s weren’t exactly the friendliest of times for hard
\nrock bands to commercially cash in and collect awards with the
\nindustry focusing in on promoting a bevy of boy bands and nu-metal
\nrap acts. With this in mind, Wyndorf could be expected and should
\nbe forgiven for allowing Monster Magnet to further distance
\nthemselves from their stoner-rock jam-band roots after the band
\nattained such notoriety in such a dubious climate.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, if we were to agree that
\nPowertrip<\/i> was fueled with street sexy 93-octane power, the
\nresult of
\nGod Says No<\/i> would be more along the lines of the standard
\n87-octane version. While both albums were built from the same hard
\nrock mold, differences appear in the
\nGod Says No<\/i> tracks “Gravity Well,” “Queen of You” and “Take
\nIt,” which find the songs ebbing and flowing through significant
\ndoses of keyboards and synthesized drum tracking. These sources of
\ninstrumentation attempt to bridge
\nGod Says No<\/i> back into the psychedelic direction of Monster
\nMagnet’s 1995
\nDopes To Infinity<\/i> release.<\/p>\n
The rock tracks on the album even find the need to crescendo
\nthemselves into the frenetic bombast associated with the core songs
\non
\nPowertrip<\/i>. If you can visualize Dave Wyndorf hypnotically
\nsnake-dancing behind the mic-stand before he unleashes vocally into
\na fist pumping fury while performing “Heads Explode” and ” Silver
\nFuture” you’ll be able to understand the vibe on this album. It’s
\nthe head-above-the-clouds vibe that only Wyndorf can pull off in
\ncircumstances like this, as he capitalizes on his ability to
\nlyrically construct songs that will elicit genuine smirks from the
\nlistening body.<\/p>\n
\nGod Says No<\/i> features Phil Caivano as a full time guitarist
\nbacking Ed Mundell. The addition of Caivano cements a heavier tone
\nto some songs and frees up Mundell to experiment with lead breaks
\nthat are more experimental in nature from the direction the song
\nwould have headed if there were only one guitarist. Perfect
\nexamples of this teamwork would be the last guitar jam on “Heads
\nExplode” or several of the solo’s performed on “Melt.”<\/p>\n
While the songs on
\nGod Says No<\/i> have been described as a
\nDopes To Infinity<\/i>\/
\nPowertrip<\/i>-era hybrid, I would normally be prepared to sign
\noff with an unadulterated ringing endorsement based on that
\nknowledge alone. After familiarizing myself with this album since
\nits release, though, I’ll have to say that
\nGod Says No<\/i> largely comes across as an album that sounds too
\neclectic for its own good. The psychedelia and rock combination
\ndoesn’t benefit in the same way as if Monster Magnet were to just
\nconcentrate solely on recording in either one of those genres.<\/p>\n
And while somewhere it was said that the lyric book Wyndorf used
\nto compose the tracks on
\nGod Says No<\/i> was stolen out of his car a couple of weeks
\nbefore the album’s production, it doesn’t hide the fact that this
\nalbum isn’t the top-to-bottom effort that
\nDopes To Infinity<\/i> or
\nPowertrip<\/i> were. Coupled with the fact that the corporate
\nindustry climate hasn’t warmed any more to hard rock releases since
\n2001,
\nGod Says No<\/i> would find itself having an even tougher time
\nthan its predecessor in picking up the Gold status hardware (as it
\nhas yet to do).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":26436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6886],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-37669","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-monster-magnet","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37669"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}