I know the various eras of Monster Magnet have their fans, but what to me undebatable about the long-running New Jersey-based heavy rock progenitors is the impact they’ve had across the span of their career. Whichever of their records is your favorite — their most recent outing, 2022’s demo-comp Test Patterns: Vol. 1, rawly highlighted the unhinged early cosmic weirdness of “TAB” in the band’s formative state as the trio of Dave Wyndorf, Tim Cronin and John McBain — you would have a hard time overstating their contribution to rock and roll, period, broadening the scope of post-grunge commercialism with hard riffs and due sneer in the later-’90s after emerging from the roots presented on Test Patterns to cast a singular mold of heavy space and psychedelic rock earlier in that decade.
Through the tumult of lineup changes, addiction, a couple ultimately-middling-but-still-smarter-than-everybody LPs and more besides in the ’00s, and a 2010s that included some of their most accomplished work in bringing together the styles explored in disparate succession prior, Wyndorf has steered Monster Magnet to grandmaster status. As they celebrate the 35th anniversary of the band later this year with a European tour built around previously-announced headliner slots at Madrid, Spain’s Kristonfest, Up in Smoke in Switzerland and Desertfest Belgium in Antwerp, I find myself most of all hoping that the 1989-2024 logo featured on the poster below ends up on a t-shirt at some non-bootleg merch outlet. And as I was lucky enough to see what I think is still the current incarnation of the band — Wyndorf on vocals/guitar alongside six-stringers Phil Caivano and Garrett Sweeney, Bob Pantella on drums, Alec Morton on bass — last year headlining Desertfest New York (review here), I can only advise catching them when and if you can whether you’ve seen them before or not. At some point, Dave Wyndorf is gonna get sick of this shit. Clearly he’s not there yet, but it could happen.
Dates are on the poster (in the old days, you used to get a press release about this kind of thing, but don’t let me complain) below, along with the note about tickets going on sale this Friday.
Right on:
Announcing – Monster Magnet 35th Anniversary Tour: 1989-2024
Tickets On-sale: Fri 10 May 2024 (10am CEST / 9am BST).
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