“Bring me some fucking chaos!” yells Ben Ward, lobbing bottles of beer into the mosh pit and glorifying in the sludge-filth of Orange Goblin.
It’s certainly the right night for it; after London’s grindhouse rock’n’roll gremlins have drenched the stage in aural petrol with Motörhead-resurrected songs like The Devil’s Whip and Saruman’s Wish, Monster Magnet arrive to revisit their mystical sci-fi decade on A&M Records in the 90s with a barrage of elemental firestorms.
Against a backdrop of cult biker films, soft porn and meteorite strikes on major London landmarks, frontman Dave Wyndorf corrals a spine-shuddering racket. Crop Circle descends like a mothership over Cornish wheat fields, and Powertrip could be Not Fade Away being played on a variety of differently tuned nuclear warheads. From the wind-tunnel rush of Dinosaur Vacume to the bit in Cage Around The Sun that sounds like a tornado hitting a Death Valley stoner campfire, there’s no let-up as MM mine this rich seam of their archaeology, stretching out every song to ludicrous degrees of scree. Whether insisting we shout ‘motherfucker’ with conviction on Space Lord, or making closer Negasonic Teenage Warhead sound like Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit with a shotgun rammed up its arse, Monster Magnet are a gloriously offensive middle-age rampage. Chaos on cue.
