Superjudge

New Jersey retro hard rockers Monster Magnet made their major label debut with this 1993 slab, an 11-track journey through downwardly mobile, suburban excess that begins with visions of glory (“Cyclops Revolution”) and ends with abjection and, in Blue Öyster Cult’s words, O.D.-ing on life itself (“Black Balloon”). In between, we get two stomping covers — Howlin’ Wolf’s “Evil (Is Going On),” filtered through Cactus’s proto-metal 1970 version, and Hawkwind’s “Brainstorm” — the sludgy, almost Butthole Surfers-esque title track, and fuzzed-out guitar riffs and solos that’ll make you bang your head until it topples off and rolls down the street. Bandleader Dave Wyndorf had a vision of psychedelic hard rock as a platform for surreal lyrical braggadocio seemingly pulled from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World comics, and on Superjudge it arrives in its most uncut form.