Review Summary: The moment stoner rock became an album!
Released in 1991, Spine of God feels like one of the true birthplaces of stoner rock in full-length form. There were crucial precedents — Across the River's pioneering mid-eighties work, Monster Magnet's own early EPs and the embryonic Kyuss demos — but here the essential vocabulary finally comes together across an entire album: enormous fuzz, psychedelia, repetitive grooves, dirty hard rock, cosmic imagery and riffs seemingly designed to melt amplifiers.
Pill Shovel is a magnificent declaration of intent: crushing distortion, Dave Wyndorf's ragged vocals and hypnotically repetitive rhythms encapsulate an emerging musical language in a single song. Medicine brings more hard rock energy, occasionally approaching stoner metal, while Nod Scene stretches the formula into a longer, psychedelic trance. Black Mastermind is even better, combining an unmistakable seventies Black Sabbath influence with a more modern chorus and a wonderfully psychedelic finale. Zodiac Lung slows everything down, its mysterious layered guitars and percussion creating an appropriately dusty, almost hallucinatory atmosphere.
The title track pushes that psychedelia further through distortion, hypnotic repetition and a gigantic central riff, even anticipating some of the atmospheric ideas bands such as Tool would later explore, although its eight minutes become slightly exhausting. Snake Dance is one of the highlights: heavy, rhythmic and unmistakably desert-like, already pointing toward territory Kyuss would soon make legendary. Sin's a Good Man's Brother offers another superb proto-stoner riff, while Ozium closes proceedings through echoes, psychedelia and a long, repetitive instrumental development.
Spine of God is not perfect, and some of its extended psychedelic excursions can become excessive. Yet its historical importance is difficult to overstate. This is fuzz, psychedelia, Sabbath worship and desert heaviness crystallizing into something new. In 1991, Monster Magnet weren't simply recording a great heavy rock album — they were helping give stoner rock its identity.
Best Tracks: Pill Shovel, Snake Dance, Black Mastermind, Sin's a Good Man's Brother
Rating: ****
