Published on Jul 29, 2003
After dauntlessly touring themselves to death resulted in
Monster Magnet’s
Powertrip reaching Gold status in the States, the band’s
vocalist Dave Wyndorf found himself building on the hard rock
formula of that release as he wrote the songs for the band’s
follow-up album,
God Says No.
The late ’90s weren’t exactly the friendliest of times for hard
rock bands to commercially cash in and collect awards with the
industry focusing in on promoting a bevy of boy bands and nu-metal
rap acts. With this in mind, Wyndorf could be expected and should
be forgiven for allowing Monster Magnet to further distance
themselves from their stoner-rock jam-band roots after the band
attained such notoriety in such a dubious climate.
Furthermore, if we were to agree that
Powertrip was fueled with street sexy 93-octane power, the
result of
God Says No would be more along the lines of the standard
87-octane version. While both albums were built from the same hard
rock mold, differences appear in the
God Says No tracks “Gravity Well,” “Queen of You” and “Take
It,” which find the songs ebbing and flowing through significant
doses of keyboards and synthesized drum tracking. These sources of
instrumentation attempt to bridge
God Says No back into the psychedelic direction of Monster
Magnet’s 1995
Dopes To Infinity release.
The rock tracks on the album even find the need to crescendo
themselves into the frenetic bombast associated with the core songs
on
Powertrip. If you can visualize Dave Wyndorf hypnotically
snake-dancing behind the mic-stand before he unleashes vocally into
a fist pumping fury while performing “Heads Explode” and ” Silver
Future” you’ll be able to understand the vibe on this album. It’s
the head-above-the-clouds vibe that only Wyndorf can pull off in
circumstances like this, as he capitalizes on his ability to
lyrically construct songs that will elicit genuine smirks from the
listening body.
God Says No features Phil Caivano as a full time guitarist
backing Ed Mundell. The addition of Caivano cements a heavier tone
to some songs and frees up Mundell to experiment with lead breaks
that are more experimental in nature from the direction the song
would have headed if there were only one guitarist. Perfect
examples of this teamwork would be the last guitar jam on “Heads
Explode” or several of the solo’s performed on “Melt.”
While the songs on
God Says No have been described as a
Dopes To Infinity/
Powertrip-era hybrid, I would normally be prepared to sign
off with an unadulterated ringing endorsement based on that
knowledge alone. After familiarizing myself with this album since
its release, though, I’ll have to say that
God Says No largely comes across as an album that sounds too
eclectic for its own good. The psychedelia and rock combination
doesn’t benefit in the same way as if Monster Magnet were to just
concentrate solely on recording in either one of those genres.
And while somewhere it was said that the lyric book Wyndorf used
to compose the tracks on
God Says No was stolen out of his car a couple of weeks
before the album’s production, it doesn’t hide the fact that this
album isn’t the top-to-bottom effort that
Dopes To Infinity or
Powertrip were. Coupled with the fact that the corporate
industry climate hasn’t warmed any more to hard rock releases since
2001,
God Says No would find itself having an even tougher time
than its predecessor in picking up the Gold status hardware (as it
has yet to do).