Like a Bomb

Mondo Generator - Dead Planet
Suburban Noize; 2007
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I don't know if Nick Oliveri's newest Mondo Generator release really counts as new - 13 of the 17 songs on Dead Planet were released on September 11, 2006 on the import-only Dead Planet: Sonicslowmotiontrails. The songs were re-ordered, the album title shortened, and the album proper lengthened with four or so additional songs. Still, I was surprised to see a new Mondo Generator release at Best Buy so soon after the newest Queens of the Stone Age album, so I picked it up.

This is by far the most cohesive, complete Mondo Generator album so far. It is also the least experimental, and the least raw, and the least spontaneous, the least risky, and so on. And I know that we all can't keep up the QotSA comparisons forever, but it is worth noting that this is the first significant release by Mondo Generator without any imput from Stone Age Queen Josh Homme. For the first time, Mondo Generator is acting as a primary band instead of a side project, and sounding more like an actual band than a collection of musicians throwing sounds into the mix.

Over the first seven tracks or so, Dead Planet is loud and punky and overly processed, complete with quick power chords and scratchy slides - they sound a little like Recipe for Hate era Bad Religion. Even Oliveri's throaty vocals seem sort of limited and condensed. I mean, Cocaine Rodeo was raw, and Drug Problem was weird, and in comparison Dead Planet falls too easily into the rock formula, both in song writing and in production.

I read somewhere that (most of) this album was recorded at Dave Grohl's studio. I wonder what kind of time table they were on, because unlike most of the Foo Fighters's material, this sounds thin and really formulaic. They just didn't take the time to get interesting tone, which has really been key to the great QotSA-related albums out there. It's not that the tone on R or Drug Problem or Peace, Love, Death Metal was great; it's that the tone on those albums was unique.

It takes until track eight for things to slow down and fall into the more trippy and familiar off-kilter rhythmic sound that I was expecting. For a run of a few songs the album gets much, much better. The best tracks are those that avoid the hard rock/punk formula: The three hit combo of Like a Bomb, So High, and Sonicslowmotiontrails would fit very well on a Queens album. This is followed by Sleep the Lie Away, a nice but trippy acoustic tune which even has a muted trumpet part and a spacey bridge which really reminds me of material from classic albums R and Drug Problem. The rest of the album is hit and miss. There She Goes Again could have been recorded by Rancid. The last to songs are pretty good, not great; they just don't gel.

Bizarre personal and personnel problems aside, Nick Oliveri is a good musician. His energy has left a hole in QotSA which hasn't been filled despite the relative popularity of the band. Still, energy alone won't carry a whole album. With Dead Planet, Mondo Generator has put out a really good EP with seven or so extra songs of generic filler, and then made the mistake of putting it at the beginning of the album. WTF?