Monster Magnet - Milking The Stars: A Reimagining Of Last Patrol

Monster Magnet - Milking The Stars: A Reimagining Of Last Patrol
Released by: Napalm Records
Released on: November 14^th, 2014.
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The tenth studio album from New Jersey's stoner rock long timers Monster Magnet was Last Patrol, a fantastic collection of riffy, doomy, sludgy rock n roll that has now been reissued, kinda-sorta, as Milking The Stars. Once again, the lineup consists of Dave Wyndorf up front and center with Garrett Sweeny and Phil Caivano on lead and rhythm guitar respectively, John Baglino on bass and Bob Pantella on drums. This isn't just a matter of reissuing an album with some bonus tracks on it, however, it's more a case of playing 'what if' - Wyndorf says in the press materials accompanying the MP3s sent for review that he wanted to know what it would sound like “if these songs were recorded in 1968? What would happen if I turned a pretty song into an angry one? How would adding creepy organs and Mellotrons affect the emotional vibe of a song? These are just a few of the questions that roll around in my head when I write and record any album but this time I decided to actually answer them with fully fleshed out, recorded and mixed examples.”

The complete track listing Milking The Stars: A Reimagining Of Last Patrol is as follows:

Let The Circuses Burn / Mindless Ones '68 / No Paradise For Me / End Of Time (B-3) / Milking The Stars / Hellelujah (Fuzz And Swamp) / I Live Behind The Clouds (Roughed Up And Ready) / Goliath Returns / Stay Tuned (Even Sadder) / The Duke (Full On Drums 'N Wah)

The album opens with Let The Circuses Burn, a fantastic seven and a half minute instrumental track heavy on guitars and organs that is as weird and spacey as anything you can imagine from the opening note through to the finale little bit of reverb that sends it away and kicks into Mindless Ones '68. This second track has got the organs up front again but the guitars get all weird and acid-tinged while Wyndorf's vocals increase in intensity throughout the song building to a pretty chaotic conclusion. Somehow this chaos segues perfectly into the extremely mellow intro for No Paradise For Me, a five and a half minute piece that channels The Doors as much as it channels the MC5 and yet somehow still sounds like Monster Magnet, even if those elements of sonic time travel definitely work their way into this track. These three tracks didn't appear on the regular issue of Last Patrol, so at this point it's all new material and good material at that.

The fourth track, End Of Time, did appear on the last record but it's presented here in a completely different form. It's still the same song but like Wyndorf says, it's got a sixties feel to it and the organs in the background definitely add to that. The title track, Milking The Stars, is a slow jam of sorts, though it's one with a lot of swear words in it, so don't play it for your mom. Unless your mom likes swear words. It's lengthy at almost seven and a half minutes and towards the end it goes into increasingly psychedelic territory to the point where it almost puts you into a trance. Hellelujah (Fuzz And Swamp) is appropriately re-titled with those brackets as it takes the track that was on Last Patrol and gives it a sort of swampy, stombox sort of sound, the kind you'd here if you heard some hillbillies playing this on their porch if you were dosed on whatever it is you might care to dose yourself with prior. There's a weird gospel influence here too. I Live Behind The Clouds (Roughed Up And Ready) starts off slowly, Dave's vocals over a guitar hitting a single chord in repetition at first, and then it builds in complexity and heaviness for the next minutes or so before exploding at the two minute mark into a cacophony of swirling guitars and growling vocals. It's pretty rad what they do here. Heavy but not overplayed and pretty intense at times too. Wyndorf sings this one like he means it.

Three tracks left? Okay, Goliath Returns is, at three and a half minutes, the shortest song on the album. The drums do all the heavy lifting here, anchoring the track, an instrumental one, as it builds right on into Stay Tuned (Even Sadder), a revised version of a Last Patrol track. It goes at things slowly, mostly Wyndorgs vocals over some weird Hawkwind style space sounds, for a good six minutes. It does have a sad feel to it though, so the bracketed subtitle works. It kind of makes you feel like laying down in the middle of the floor, turning off all of the lights and… spinning. The album finishes off with another Last Patrol re-recording in the form of the five and a half minute closer, The Duke (Full On Drums 'N Wah). It keeps that sort of mellow into thing going, Wyndorf's vocals over some mellow guitar with basic drum and bass behind it, opening things up a bit more around the four minute mark as the instrumentation gets heavier and more pronounced. The digipak and vinyl releases include two live tracks, Last Patrol and Three Kingfishers, but they weren't included with review materials. Maybe they're great, maybe they're not. The ten tracks that are here, however, compliment Last Patrol proper quite nicely. They do have a late sixties era vibe to them in terms of the organ in the mix and the production values that are apparent in the overall 'sound' of the record but it never feels gimmicky. Likewise, the material is new and fresh enough so as not to sound like a simple reissue of the album that came before it last year. It's an interesting and pretty successful experiment from Monster Magnat that retro-grades their sound without distorting or contaminating it. It might not be the best starting point for those new to the band's output for if you're into them, definitely be sure to give this a shot.

Dig hot chicks, assassination and mushroom clouds? Then check out a video for The Duke!