Three-piece bands are usually ace. There’s something about them. That trend continues with Birmingham’s Margarita Witch Cult.
If you could handpick a band to support Monster Magnet, MWC would be the one. You only have to take one listen to “Scream Bloody Murdor” to come to that conclusion in fairness, but it’s more than that.
One minute they are Sabbath, thick riffs and 70s incense wafting through the air, the next they are yelling: “This one is a headbanger” and “Cyclops” delivers.
“Annihilation” is similarly thunderous, and there are highlights everywhere you look. “The Witchfinder Comes” is so good it recalls the mighty Cathedral, and they offer up a “new” song “Crawl Home To Your Coffin” (they’ve been playing it since the spring apparently) which suggests album number two might be a cracker.
If you want to understand their mad, bad world then how about their cover of “White Wedding”? Let’s just say Cult makes it their own.
They end with “Sacrifice” – a simple shouter of a chorus, with riffs by the barrow full.
That’s Margarita Witch Cult, nailed. Riff after riff, The Wildhearts once said. They could have been talking about these boys.
A show that begins with the words “Are you ready to like a little ride?” Ends with the suggestion that we should “get in your car, drive to the moon and blow it up. I command you!”
It can only mean Monster Magnet are in town.
Dave Wyndorf has piloted the group through 30 years of ups, downs, highs – mostly drug-induced – and lows, and they’re here to celebrate.
In typical style, though, there’s been an issue. Wyndorf had some vaccinations before the tour and he’s not feeling well. He’s sat down for this and a couple are cut from the encore, but the 11 they do play prove MM are essentially untouchable.
Trippy – the narration of “The Diamond Mine” is pure Hunter S Thompson – yet dumb rock as “Tractor” exemplifies, although in fairness, if anyone were to drive the tractor on a drug farm it’d be Dave.
As the B-Movies play behind them—Werewolves On Wheels, various naked ladies are amongst some that pepper the evening—slabs of metal are handed down from somewhere in the Milky Way, which like “Superjudge” are a hail of screeching bullets.
Then there are some of the greatest songs ever written, like “Negasonic Teenage Warhead.”
Both ends of their material are shown by “Zodiac Lung” and “Twin Earth,” while there’s a freakout with “Ego, The Living Planet” (“if you’re looking for an example of Neanderthal, knuckle-dragging rock, this “It is,” says Wyndorf.
It is not as dumb as the wonderful “Bummer”—which possesses some of the finest lyrics in history—nor is it as involved and psychedelic as the jam on “Spine Of God.” That “journey” Wyndorf spoke of is all here in microcosm.
The shortened encore contains only the breakthrough hit “Space Lord” from the late ’90s, but perfect for now, it gets wild; it’s an unlikely anthem, yet it palpably is one.
Although they have been all too infrequent visitors to the UK over these 30 years, nonetheless, Monster Magnet is one of the finest and most unique bands of the last three decades.
