ALBUM REVIEW: Mondo Generator, "Shooters Bible"

By: Peter Morsellino

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 28/02/2020

Label: Heavy Psych Sounds Records

“Shooter’s Bible” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Dead Silence
2. Invisible Like the sky
3. Burn a Bridge
4. Won’t Let Go
5. Central Nervous System High (School)
6. This Isn’t Love
7. We Are Mondo Generator
8. Smashed Apart
9. Dog Food
10. Night Calls
11. Hang Me High
12. The Way I Let You Down
13. The Last Train

The Review: 

Here it is folks, the moment you've all be waiting for. The long lost “Shooter's Bible” by Desert Rock mainstays Mondo Generator. Three words: Worth The Wait.

Now while we have heard many of these songs reworked and rerecorded on 2012's “Hell Comes to Your Heart”, it is immediately apparent that this is a different animal entirely. A dirtier, angrier, much more dangerous animal. This is rock and roll as it was meant to be heard.

Now, I'm not one of those people who feels the need to deride something for sounding good. I personally always found the notion silly. There were a million reasons to take these songs and polish them into what we heard on “Hell Comes to Your Heart”. Tastes change. Maybe the draw of commercial appeal was too hard to exist. “Hell Comes Your to Heart” doesn't suffer for sounding as good as it does. Not one bit.

What we have here on “Shooter's Bible”, though, is raw and uncut, unpolished and magical. Those songs that you loved on “Hell Comes to Your Heart” now stand before you naked, dripping in afterbirth and screaming. It's natural. I believe this to be what Nick Oliveri's head sounds like. We even have the gritty cover of Iggy Pop's "Dog Food" back on the album proper (a track that I can't neglect to note features the drum work of a very talented young upstart by the name of Dave Grohl). This is the way the album was conceived, the way it was meant to be heard, reminiscent of the deluxe edition of Sublime's self titled, but with so much more to offer.

Once again, none of this makes “Hell Comes to Your Heart” a bad album. It's just a different take.  I for one am glad to have both albums. To compare and contrast. To hear the evolution.

No doubt, this release will prove to be divisive amongst hardcore Mondo Generator fans. But either as a peek into the history of what could have been or as a damn fine gritty rock and roll record on its own, it deserves a listen at the very least.

“Shooter’s Bible” is available HERE

Band info: facebook