Monster Magnet burst onto the unsuspecting rock world in 1991 with blistering psychedelic acid metal classic "The Spine of God", which stated the band’s Gonzo credo right on the record sleeve- ‘It’s a Satanic drug thing, you wouldn’t understand’. Fusing the space jam freakouts of Hawkwind with the fuzz punk wail of the Stooges and adding evil beatnik war poetry over the top was one of the best ideas a rock and roller ever had, and Dave Wyndorf knew it. Ten years later, and Monster Magnet have endured every ugly trend that’s threatened to ruin the party - jangle rock, grunge, mall punk. Nothing could topple the growing Magnet monolith. The band went super nova in 1998 with ‘Power Trip’, the gold selling, hit single spewing beast that put the band on the road for two years, a grueling campaign that nearly cost Dave his sanity. After a brief respite, he watched the time tick down until the next album was due. The result is "God says No", a hastily but brilliantly assembled pastiche of post touring combat shock, a last minute Hail Mary pass to an embattled rock nation. Dave Wyndorf knew exactly what was going on out there, and he didn’t like it. Nu-Metal, the rap-rock aggro-whine hybrid championed by bands like Papa Roach and Limp Bizkit became the latest evil to be vanquished. "It’s definitely the worst thing to ever happen to hard rock, because now hard rock is defined by bad pop, and that was never the case before", he tells me from a payphone somewhere in California. "At least before, from metal, through grind-core, or whatever, at least it always kept it’s integrity. Now it’s completely sold out as far as the media is concerned. They call it the return of the rock. It’s not. It’s really bad pussy rock, it’s like jock rock. How can I explain it…it’s victim rock." Take it from the guy who recently penned the brilliant lyric ‘It’s time to suck the cock of a Fire God, baby’ - rock and roll has no place for suburban angst." Rockn’roll was always about reinventing yourself. Ok, if you were a victim, like most people were in one way or another when they were kids, reinvent yourself with the power of the music. That’s what always got you out of that shit. The worst thing of all is that it seems to be jocks doing it. What’s more distasteful then an abused jock?"

You won’t find any lamentations of broken homes in the grooves of ‘God Say No’. Broken bones and twisted pleasures figure prominently though." Monster Magnet went from me telling stories about my childhood, to me talking about the present tense" he tells me, when describing the inspiration for the latest album. "This time I had a whole basketful of emotions from touring ‘Power Trip’.What happened was, we were out there for two years, and it got so over the top, I ran down the list of every excess you can possible imagine. When I quit doing drugs, the excess became sexual, and it was a whole new bag of tricks. At the end I started thinking, ‘just because you can do something, must you? I think that’s a lot of what the record was about- why at this stage in my life do I have to push things so far, why do I need to get this kind of emotion out of people? I mean the girls… I got into the whole bondage thing, pushing people around, because they wanted me to…" Dave sighs, the memories exhausting him. "At the end of it, I needed a psychiatrist’s couch. It got really bad" Ah, the perils of rock and roll decadence. Of course, we are talking about Brother Dave Wyndorf. I mean, he’s no Trent Reznor. "Oh, yeh, man. I was Trent Reznor - bad, definitely." All without the numbing benefits of whiskey and pills. Things must have gotten super-real out there. "Very super real. Having done drugs a lot, I can say that it’s much more of a trip to get into this stuff without them. It’s a great way out, of forgetting, but the drugs at least diffuse the situation. Without them, you tend to review yourself daily. It’s not like going out on a bender, and the next day going, ’what the fuck did I do?’ because you know what you did. It’s pretty amazing. Ah, well, there was no major damage done." Plenty of terrible true tales to tell tho. " I toured Jerry Springer’s America big time", Dave says. "I don’t really have to make anything up any more, because I’ve actually seen worse."

With the album in the hands of the true believers, it was time to grab the reins of the American horse and bring the heavy gospel to the people once again. Who better to join them then the rejuvenated Cult?. "Fuck yeah, man." He says, sounding as excited about it as I am." Rock’s got to make a stand somewhere. I mean, there’s a lot of real rock bands out there, like Queens of the Stone Age, Unida, and all the Swedish stuff, but no one’s getting played on the radio, so it’s important for anybody that’s got any kind of influence to go out there an make a show of force." You can’t get more influential, or inspiring, than the Cult. "Nobody’s more of a true believer than Ian Astbury", he says. "We ran into him during the last tour, and he was hanging out on the bus. He was saying ‘Man, nobody’s into the rock anymore’, and I was like, "Fuck, we are! Come out with us!" I tell him that this tour feels like justice. "There’s no doubt about it, man", he says. "This tour is a campaign to keep the rock alive".