Monster Magnet

Test Patterns, Vol 1

GOD UNKNOWN The heavy beginnings of the Monster Magnet saga.

If you thought Sleep invented the album-long smoke-out, you’re in for a surprise. Back in the late 80s, Jersey stoner champs Monster Magnet bashed out a couple of wild and fuzzy demo tapes. The first,

Forget About Life, I’m High On Dope, was anchored around a 20-minute megadose of psychedelic horseshit called Tab. The shrill and alarming sounds of suicidal bikers thrumming down death’s highway to a soundtrack of Ash Ra Temple playing backwards, it was a truly monolithic work of micro-budget madness; a towering inferno of acid-metal guitars, skittering black-lizard vocals, doomsday samples and pulsating madness.

Tab bore very little resemblance to the strident space-lord motherfuckers Magnet would eventually become when they could afford better drugs and equipment, but it was still very much in line with frontman

Dave Wyndorf’s perpetual Jack Kirby/Dave Brock fever dream.

And now it’s back, with a wild new 2021 remix that puts a whole new dynamic sheen on this ground-breaking slab of headphone horror. The hissy original lo-fi demo mix is on the flip for the true psych-grunge connoisseur. Both ably demonstrate just how far out – and ahead of their time – these stoner rock pioneers were.