Bachata Roja: Acoustic Bachata from the Cabaret Era

CD Reviews

Monster Magnet

4-Way Diablo | SPV

By TED DROZDOWSKI | December 10, 2007

3.0 Stars

This little voyage to leader Dave Wyndorf’s private hell and back isn’t as big-boned as the Magnet’s hook-heavy 1998 classic Powertrip (A&M), but it is full of sonic pins and needles: guitar riffs that prick their way through the songs’ seams, churning rhythms that keep numbers like “You’re Alive” tilting and spinning, and textures that balance the psychedelic past with the stoner-rock present, a feat navigated artfully in a cover of the Stones’ “2000 Light Years from Home.” Some of the tunes allude to Wyndorf’s 2006 OD on prescription meds and his recovery from addiction, but overall this is still a soundtrack for a world populated by a cast of Hammer Film characters: lush, lustful, and lurid. Now straight and sober, 18 years, six albums, and two EPs into his Monster Magnet career, Wyndorf remains that world’s absolute master.

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