Monster Magnet’s last album Last Patrol — which resurfaced as the reimagined Milking The Stars in November — took a step back towards the swirling psychedelia of the band’s earlier output.
Opening the set with a cover of Robert Calvert’s The Right Stuff seems to reaffirm the band’s fresh commitment to all things psychotropic.
Dave Wyndorf’s wearing a vintage UFO T-shirt, an oil wheel shifts and spins on the backdrop, and Monster Magnet deliver a set that doesn’t just fill the room but howls through the venue like a meteor. Five songs from Last Patrol feature. A thundering version of the title track sounds like Hawkwind playing intergalactic Pong with Kiss; I Live Behind The Clouds starts off gently hypnotic before climbing to a shattering zenith; End Of Tune and Stay Tuned are suitably spectral; and the band’s cover of Donovan’s Three Kingfishers replaces the wobbling acoustic of the original with Sabbath bludgeon and bluster. There’s no room for Negasonic Teenage Warhead , but Spine Of God includes an unlikely nod to Don McLean’s American Pie, and the final two encores – a driving Tractor and an epic, sprawling _Space Lord _– bring the evening to a shuddering climax.
For a bunch of regular humans, Monster Magnet do a remarkable job of providing Wyndorf’s flights of comic-book fancy with the required thrust and scale.
