Monster Magnet

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• Genre: Stoner Rock
• Hometown: Red Bank
• Monster Magnet Website

About

During the stoner-rock heyday of the early '90s, Monster Magnet stood out from the samey-ness of the Fu Manchus of the world by lining their fattened riffs with a psychedelic edge that smacked more of LSD than the marijuana obsessions of everybody else taking the ball from the Melvins and running with it at the time. Led by guitarist Dave Wyndorf and strongly influenced by then-unfashionable Hawkwind, Monster Magnet enjoyed critical favor from the start with the appearance of Spine of God in 1991. Long songs, vector-plotting bass lines and wormhole solo freak-outs served as calling cards for the band. Their third album, Dopes to Infinity (1995), marked a creative peak even if the expected mainstream success didn't follow, and Wyndorf relocated the band to Las Vegas, stripping back their sound and reigning in the trippiness. The result was 1998's Powertrip, sparking a commercial breakthrough thanks to "Space Lord" becoming an MTV hit. With each subsequent album, Monster Magnet has retreated further from their spaced-out stoner-rock beginnings and moved deeper into a straight-up hard-rock style.

- Mike McGuirk