by Martin Popoff
Mondo Generator - Cocaine Rodeo
(Southern Lord '00)One of the better side projects from the desert rock godhead known as Kyuss, Mondo Generator is the brainchild of bassist Nick Oliveri (known as Rex Everything in deference to his Dwarves stint), now with Queens Of The Stone Age. Along for the drugs is Josh Homme, also from that band and old Kyuss mate Brant Bjork, as well as Rob from Karma To Burn. What we get is agitated, eductated, calibrated stoner rock, something akin to hopped-up QOTSA crossed with the jangled chaos of Jesus Lizard, Nick bellowing over the top like some sort of beat generation version of hardcore, old Replacement punk, are, alt., bass-toned like Minutemen and Firehose, affable stoner metal lite... it's all here in the spirit of making good pure messy music. Note: recorded in '97 then shelved, presumably as QOTSA sorta wobbled to success. Cohesive: no, fully actualized: no, but regularly entertaining, hell yeah.
Rating 7.5Motorhead - Over The Top: The Rarities
Motorhead - The Chase Is Better Than The Catch: The Singles A&B's
(both Castle '00)
Motorhead - The Best Of
(Metal -Is/BMG '00)Fast catching up to Maiden in the exploitational release department (no worries: wait 'til you see what Maiden's '00-'02 bum rush agenda is), Motorhead get to experience the vast Sanctuary/Castle/Metal-Is/BMG/CMC label jumble to which their servitude belongs, spun jukebox-style through three more compilations within a ten minute time-span. To be fair, Motorhead is a band with a rich, non-LP track history. And if you're not caught up by less efficient means (or equally efficient means: Protect The Innocent, the '96 reissues), snagging The Chase and Over The Top will get you all the useful goodies, the latter being the number one choice if you've spent all your money buying Lemmy vodka (this one also contains a functional band history). The Best Of is another matter. It's really not that at all, containing little of the newer and better material (from a great album, We Are Motorhead, label wisdom picks a dull, unremarkable cover of God Save The Queen), and not a single photo of the latest line-up, I might add. It's two discs are actually a mix of the band's now tiring hits along with a couple previously unreleased live tracks, the Hawkwind version of Motorhead, and then a bunch of ill-picked mid-years choices. And no Bastards, Castle likely too lazy to track down ZYX Music. Booklet's good though, containing a better, longer history, previously unpublished photos and then at the end a pointless collage of eight different album covers. Collectors, novices, completists, come all.
Rating 8.5, 7.5, 5.5
