MONSTER MAGNET frontman Dave Wyndorf is featured in a new interview with Brendan Crabb at Australia-based Loud Magazine. An excerpt is available below.

Q: You’ve remarked in recent interviews that (new album) Mastermind is a more complete and less patched together album than (2007’s) 4-Way Diablo. Can you elaborate on that?

A: "Yeah, I mean 4-Way Diablo was… This album was written in my usual style, which is, I sit there and I write an album, where I write the whole thing all at once. 4-Way Diablo was not that, it was pieces of this and pieces of that. It was bringing a bunch of pieces together and trying to make it into an album. It’s tough to say (if) one way is worse than the other, but this album was a lot more focused. Much more focused."

Q: In what other ways do you feel the new record is a step up from your previous releases?

A: "I think sound-wise it’s a big improvement. I don’t know if the music is a big improvement, but sound-wise it’s better. Here’s some stuff I’ve been wanting to try for a while; I wanted to do an all-Gibson record, use a lot more vintage amps than I usually did. I really, really went in hard, using a lot of vintage amplifiers to make this one sound a little bit meatier than what’s in the past. I think the actual playing on it is better than it’s ever been."

Q: What does the title Mastermind mean to you?

A: "Mastermind? It’s a word that I like a lot. It sounds really cool (laughs). I had a conversation with a girl in Texas about five or six years ago and it’s been just rolling around in my head ever since. I was trying to get her to go into my hotel room with me and she wouldn’t go. I was like, 'Please, please come into the hotel with me' and she wasn’t going for it. I wondered what I was going to do, so I figured I had nothing to lose at this point. So I just whispered all these like lurid details about what I was going to do. She pulled back, she had a smile on her face and she goes, 'You’re some kind of a mastermind, aren’t you?' I just cracked up laughing; it was really funny to hear this girl say the word 'mastermind.' That’s been in my head ever since and it finally showed up in a song (laughs)."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Monster Magnet recently entered the official album charts in numerous countries with their latest studio effort, Mastermind.

Official chart positions include:

UK - #18 UK (Indie Charts)

US - #23 USA (Indie Charts)

Sweden - #34

Germany - #38

Norway - #41

Austria - #70

Switzerland - #84

Holland - #139

US - #142 (Billboard)

UK - #192

Mastermind was released October 29th via Napalm Records, is currently streaming in its entirety at AOL Music.

Mastermind is available as a regular CD with poster, limited digibook with two bonus tracks with poster and limited edition box continuing the digibook CD, USB Stick with Monster Magnet logo and exclusive video material (Dave Wyndorf interview from August), wallpapers, ringtones, 17-track Napalm sampler and much more.

Wyndorf describes Mastermind: "It's a big, beefy ball of demented anthems and power rock. The music itself is exaggerated and muscular. Like classic rock gone insane! Giant hooks, giant sounds. The rockers are direct and intense. The ballads, trippy and strange. It's guitar heaven."

And the lyrics? Wyndorf laughs. "Well, the lyrics read like a fever-dream of life in the 21st century. Cynicism, optimism, satire, sex, deluded fantasies and dead-on reality. They're all here – sometimes even in the same song!"

"In my world, images, information and emotions tend to intertwine. I’ll describe the smallest details of my personal life in crazy, cinematic terms. When I write, the words play out in my mind like scenes from a movie and that's the vibe I tried to capture on "Mastermind" – rapid-fire emotion. What can I say? I'm having a weird life and I have to write it down that way."
"In the end though," says Dave, "Mastermind ROCKS, and that's what's most important."

Mastermind features the following tracklisting;

'Hallucination Bomb'

'Bored With Sorcery'

'Dig That Hole'

'Gods And Punks'

'The Titan Who Cried Like A Baby'

'Mastermind'

'100 Million Miles'

'Perish In Fire'

'Time Machine'

'When The Planes Fall From The Sky'

'Ghost Story'

'All Outta Nothin''

'Watch Me Fade' (digibook/box set bonus track)

'Fuzz Pig' (digibook/box set bonus track)

The video for the first single from Mastermind, 'Gods And Punks', can be seen below.