Dopes To Infinity

Dopes To Infinity
Studio album by Monster Magnet
Released	March 21 1995
Recorded	1994 at The Magic Shop and Electric Lady Studios in New York, New York, USA
Genre	Stoner rock · space rock · stoner metal · heavy metal
Length	62:21
Producer	Dave Wyndorf, Steve Rosenthal
Monster Magnet chronology
Superjudge (1993)	Dopes To Infinity (1995)	Powertrip (1998)

Dopes To Infinity is the third studio album by the New Jersey stoner/space rock band Monster Magnet. Released on 21 March 1995, it is considered to be one of their seminal works and a classic in the stoner rock genre. In regards to the record the band drew from a wide range of influences such as Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Boston and Sir Lord Baltimore among others. In the case of the latter the main guitar riff to the title track was lifted from the 1971 song "Woman Tamer".

Despite the album selling slightly better than their previous effort Superjudge, Dopes To Infinity would spawn the band's first radio hit in "Negasonic Teenage Warhead". Negasonic would peak at 19 on the Mainstream Rock Track charts and it's respective music video garnered sizable airplay on MTV along with inspiring a Marvel comics character who would later be portrayed in the live-action Deadpool films.

Background

Following the touring cycle for Monster Magnet's second studio album Superjudge work would begin on a follow-up. In an interview with Louder Sound frontman Dave Wyndorf would state that he wanted to do everything with Dopes he couldn't do with Superjudge and compose a record that was "ethereal and smooth" along with "consistent". In the same interview he would speak about the recording process and the constant changes and creative output in the making of the record:

“	"I’ll never forget it. It was like, ‘Alright, I wanna do everything on Dopes… that I didn’t do on Superjudge.’ Superjudge was a really annoying- sounding record with a lot of mid-range stuff. On Dopes… I wanted to make a kind of smooth, ethereal kind of rock record. I wanted the whole thing to have that really consistent sound. I want to be able to put on this record and be instantly transported to the land of Dopes To Infinity and I’ll never wanna leave that land! I didn’t want it to sound like a random collection of songs. I really wanted to make something that was completely different from everything else out there. The record became a total mission for me. It didn’t take that long but it seemed like it took forever because I was always making shit up as it went along. I’d go back to the hotel room and draw diagrams and crazy stuff. It was right at the dawn of digital sampling and all the samples sounded like shit and I wanted real instruments, so I was renting real Mellotrons, and they’re a huge pain in the ass. They’re huge instruments and they have to be tuned constantly. Everything was a tuning nightmare. I was tuning the drums with a guitar tuner! Ha ha ha ha! It was nuts. It was a real weird experience for the guys I was working with too. They’d never done anything like that before. We were working from four o’clock in the afternoon until eight in the morning and the poor engineers had just about had it, like, ‘What do you want now, Dave?’"	”
	— Dave Wyndorf, Classic Rock Magazine via Louder Sound

In regards to the album's single Negasonic Teenage Warhead it was the first song recorded by Monster Magnet after the release of Superjudge because a five-minute version of it had to appear in the 1994 movie S.F.W.. The version of the song which appeared at the album was recorded at The Magic Shop, in New York City. It was released in its album, Dopes to Infinity, and as a single, the first one of the album (with a version of 4:23 minutes) in 1995. The song would become the band's first hit single, garnering moderate play on modern rock radio and MTV. The label wanted a song that could be a marketable hit and Wyndorf opted to use the song which he wrote in roughly half an hour. Wyndorf also described the video made for the song as "somewhat close to what I wanted, but when it was over I kinda thought I’d gone a bit too far".

Monster Magnet would release Dopes To Infinity on 21 March 1995 to critical praise at the time, notably awarded an "A-" score by Entertainment Weekly that same month. "Dopes To Infinity charted fairly well despite only selling slightly better than Superjudge, peaking at #22 on the US Heatseekers, #17 on the Swedish Albums Chart, #30 on the German Album Charts, #51 on the UK Album Charts and #77 on the Dutch Album Charts. "Negasonic Teenage Warhead" peaked at 19 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks and 26 on the "Modern Rock Tracks". In 2005, Dopes to Infinity was ranked number 406 in Rock Hard magazine's book of The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. In October 2006 "Dopes To Infinity" would be inducted into the Decibel Hall of Fame. Notably an alternate, unreleased take on the title track was released as part of Decibel Magazine's flexi series for Issue no. 112, released February 2014.

In regards to the album's impact on comic book and pop culture, during the early days of MTV2 (1998), in between music videos, a conversation in the woods of two stoner types was shown whereby one of the two mentions that Dopes to Infinity was one of the best albums of all time. The fifth song "Ego, The Living Planet" was named after the Marvel character of the same name, originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966. Circa 2001 Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely created a character named Negasonic Teenage Warhead for the X-Men series, with her first appearance in New X-Men #115 (August 2001). The character was named after the Monster Magnet song and, in an interview with Pop Thought, would state he was indebted to Monster Magnet. The character has been portrayed in live-action appearances, namely Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018) portrayed by Brianna Hildebrand. Wyndorf would be positive of the character and it's reception.

The release saw several versions, notably an Australian 2CD edition made for the band's tour of the country that year in support. This version featured a short live CD recorded at The Rock in Tucson, Arizona though the date and year are unknown. The original vinyl edition featured a sixteen-minute bonus track in "Forbidden Planet" while the European/UK CD featured a portion of the song after a string of silence. The Japanese CD edition featured a b-side in "Eclipse This" and a live version of "Negasonic Teenage Warhead". Spinefarm Records and Universal Music Group would re-issue Dopes To Infinity on 2CD and 2LP with bonus tracks, liner notes and a re-master.

In 2011 Monster Magnet would announce a tour of Europe where the band would perform "Dopes To Infinity" in full, despite it not being an anniversary of any sort. To coincide with the tour the band re-recorded three songs and pressed them on vinyl as Dopes. In an interview with Loud Magazine, Wyndorf would talk about this tour and the idea of doing a "full album tour":

“	"I've been watching people do this album routine where they play an album and I've always been interested because if I was a kid, I'd think that was the coolest fucking thing ever, to see a band do an entire album in sequence. You kinda want to do that. I finally talked to some people that I know who have done that I talked to Mark Arm from Mudhoney, I talked to Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age and they said how much fun they had doing it. I said, 'Alright, we're going in, we're doing it.' "I picked 'Dopes' because 'Dopes' is not our biggest-selling record but it's not our smallest-selling record either. It leaves me a chance to do the biggest seller again if it's successful. I could go up to 'Powertrip', which is the biggest-selling record, or I could go down to total undergroundsville, which is 'Spine Of God', 'Superjudge' and stuff like that. So this seemed a good place to start.""	”
	— Dave Wyndorf, Loud Magazine via Blabbermouth

Tracklist

Monster Magnet - Negasonic Teenage Warhead

All songs written by Dave Wyndorf except where noted.

• 1. Dopes To Infinity (5:43)
• 2. Negasonic Teenage Warhead (4:28)
• 3. Look To Your Orb For The Warning (6:32)
• 4. All Friends And Kingdom Come (5:38)
• 5. Ego, The Living Planet (5:07)
• 6. Blow 'Em Off (3:51)
• 7. Third Alternative (8:33)
• 8. I Control, I Fly (Wyndorf, Jon Kleiman) (3:18)
• 9. King of Mars (4:33)
• 10. Dead Christmas (3:54)
• 11. Theme From "Masterburner" (Wyndorf, Joe Calandra) (5:06)
• 12. Vertigo (5:41)

Personnel

• Dave Wyndorf - Guitar, Bass, Percussion, Theremin, Organ, Bells, Mellotron, Vocals, Art Direction, Design, Tantrums, Memory Loss, Sporadic Bliss, Mixing, Producer
• Ed Mundell - Guitar, Bass, Backing Vocals, Extreme Patience, Narcolepsy
• Joe Calandra - Bass, Guitar, Backing Vocals, Courage, Airplanes
• Jon Kleiman - Percussion, Drums, Bass, Backing Vocals, Witty Patter, Sighn
• Tim Cronin - Slave Drum (5), Atomic Propaganda, Live Visuals, Motorman
• Oliver Straus - Engineer
• Joe Warda - Engineer
• Mike Nuceder - Engineer (Assistant at Electric Lady Studios)
• Brian "Mr. Bones" Kinkead - Engineer (Assistant at Soundtracks)
• Chris Curran - Engineer (Assistant at Soundtracks)
• Bogdan Hernik - Assistant Engineer
• Jacques Von Lunen - Assistant Engineer, Production Assistant
• Alan Moulder - Mixing
• Steve Rosenthal - Engineer, Mixing, Producer
• Brian Lee - Mastering
• Sandy Brummels - Art Direction, Design
• Walberg Design - Art Direction, Design
• Mark Skillicorn - Illustration
• Michael Lavine - Photography
• Emily Kaye - Cool Brain On The Plane Of Sane
• Artie Smith - Technician
• Daniel Rey - Technician
• Phil Caivano - Technician
• Mr. Matt Wells - Technician
• Nat Priest - Technician

External Links

• / Dopes To Infinity on Discogs
• AllMusic Review
• Sputnik Music Review