Last Patrol

New Jersey's Monster Magnet have been cranking out their signature blend of FM doom rock and cosmic stoner metal since the late '80s, and releasing fat slabs of it every three years since 1991, which makes 2013's Last Patrol the venerable band's tenth long-player. Less sonically brutal than 2011's Mastermind, yet still seismic enough to bear the weight of the Monster Magnet moniker, Dave Wyndorf and company have crafted another late-period gem that sounds like an amalgam of the 13th Floor Elevators, Mark Lanegan, Ten Years After, and Mastodon. "I Live Behind the Clouds" ("Nothing's important, yet everything is/If there ain't no photo, I just don't exist") starts things out on a heady note, easing into the action like a snake poking its head of its den, before lunging into the desert proper on the dusty title cut, a nine-minute epic that slithers its way into your skull and sets up camp. A Sabbath-smacked take on Donovan's Middle Eastern-tinged "Three Kingfishers" shows the band's musical versatility hasn't lost a beat over the years, as does the bongo and synth-driven "The Duke of Supernature," a sleazy tale of sex and dark magic that wouldn't sound out of place on a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club LP. Last Patrol ties things up nicely with the one-two punch of "Strobe Light Beatdown" and "One Dead Moon," the former a blistering garage rock rager and the latter a midnight power ballad that shakes its fist at the inky blue and then disappears into its gaping maw. ~ James Christopher Monger