I Cut Off My Head, I Won’t Need It Where I’m Gonna Go

Play this:

The cyclops have revolted. Now read this nonsense.

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Cut off your legs, for you are too slow
I cut off my head, I won't need it where I'm gonna go
As the nine heads bleed, over all that is mine
Kiss the mouth of the scorpion baby
'Cause Odin sayeth it's time

The very first time I heard this track I could just feel the sheer unadulterated righteous chemical power flood into me, lighting up every vein in my body with an almost unbearable orgasm of neon pain*. The guitars callously clawed at me, spinning my consciousness up over the earth only to hurl it into the abyss with utter painful clarity from a million miles high, over and over just for kicks. When Dave Wyndorf sings ‘Gonna cry me a river, a river of tears‘, you feel the crushing emotion in it, only partially leavened by his vow to ‘Gonna eat me a mountain, a mountain of pills’.

This is heavy. Gloriously, gloriously heavy. Now stand by for judgment.

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Forget Life, I’m High On Dope!

(Title of early Monster Magnet demo tape)

Welcome to Superjudge, Monster Magnet’s second LP and tonight at least, their best. Released into an uncaring world in 1993, this nugget of brooding hallucinogenic negativity has only gathered stature and importance ever since.

Once again Superjudge is an LP I struggle to get past the opening track of, just because ‘Cyclops Revolution’ is so incredibly good. It’s very rare I don’t repeat it at least once, everything about it just reeks of power and purpose – this may be stoner rock, but nobody’s nodding off on the job here; Superjudge comes on like it’s on crank, BIG ROCK stylings to the fore.

As Wyndorf helpfully tells us in the liner notes for this 2016 reissue version he didn’t have a clue what he was doing producing this LP and so just stuffed every millisecond of it full of every rattling deathtrip he had ever grooved to in case he never got to make another one. It shows in the pure Stooges-like relentlessness in the likes of ‘Twin Earth’, ‘Unsolid’ and, the awesome ‘Face Down’; the latter featuring some of the most jarring guitars seen since Raw Power. The overall effect of Superjudge is an autistically pure quest for whiteout oblivion, if you’re up for it.

On the other hand Superjudge is not a one tone album by any stretch of the imagination, there are tricks, kicks and variations aplenty here. Take the lighter, guitars-as-sitars groove of ‘Black Balloon’ for example, or today’s favourite ‘Cage Around The Sun’. This latter is a strange hombre, an acoustic tale pitched into the realms of the unwell,that suddenly flares into loudness, like the death throes of a collapsing star**.

Christ Monster Magnet used to be good! It is difficult to highlight anybody’s contribution musically, Jon Kleiman and Joe Calandra were a great rhythm section and Ed Mundell just plays all the right notes in all the right order, aided and abetted by Wyndorf on rhythm guitar. However, they all serve the monster pretty equally and you are just left with an impression of the vastness of their sound rather than individual plinking and plonking^.

The real star though is Wyndorf, he is in great voice on Superjudge and Monster Magnet were powered by his fevered imaginings. The man was possessed of a skyscraping charisma and an ability to make every song sound like Jack Kirby’s visions of Galactus destroying the universe.

Superjudge is all good , but special mention should go to its covers, Hawkwind’s ‘Brainstorm’ and Willie-Dixon-via-Cactus ‘Evil’. Back in the far off days of 1993 the ‘Wind were not feted as the overlords of the heaviness they are today and Monster Magnet wanted to pay homage to their forebears, which they did in great piledriving style^^. The latter is a great percussive danse macabre, Wyndorf singing like his throat has been flayed by unspeakable excess.

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Now ’cause Odin sayeth its time, I shall depart this realm of reviewination, pausing merely to commend this sweary, swirly treat to your ears this festive season.

Ain't gonna stand in the rocket's shadow
My mama's waiting for me on the moon
My dick just got a million times bigger
I'll be pumping Andromeda soon   (Elephant Bell)

Which is surely what Christmas is all about?

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My copy of Superjudge is a 2016 reissue, lovingly put together by the band featuring great liner notes, all manner of contemporary artwork and an absolutely pristine sound. I’m no audiophile^* but this is much better than the CD version I, shamefully used to have.

It also comes with a side and a half of live tracks and ‘Unsolid’, which was a B-side originally but deserves to be here. The live stuff is, well, live stuff nice enough if you like that sort of thing, but not at all essential.

1117 Down.

*Merry Christmas!

**if I was in any way an inky sort of person I would have a hugely detailed back tattoo of an elaborately caged sun, with the legend ‘yanking Satan’s crank’ underneath.

^stop me if I get too technical, it’s the only fault I have.

^^tru to form I thought this was a MM original when I first heard it back in ’93.

^*that is someone who can’t get it up unless he can thinks about ears isn’t it?