The Monks: Black Monk Time [MUNSTER]

Why you'll love it

Munster's 180g reissue brings back the 1966 Polydor album that critics later recognized as a forerunner to punk. Spin ranked it No. 56 among the top alternative albums of the 1960s, and it sits in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

This edition

• 180g vinyl

About the album

Five American GIs stationed in Gelnhausen, West Germany, walk into a barbershop. One of them asks for a tonsure, the rest follow, and the Torquays leave as the Monks, in black habits with ropes around their waists. Their German managers loved it, local papers called them the anti-Beatles, and the band built a sound to match the haircuts.

Recorded in Cologne in November 1965 with Jimmy Bowien producing, Black Monk Time is all rhythm: drums with no cymbals, fuzz bass, feedback and Dave Day's electric banjo clanging away while Gary Burger yelps over the top. "Monk Time" opens the album like a call to arms, "Complication" hammers one idea until it becomes hypnotic, "I Hate You" is gloriously blunt, and "Higgle-Dy - Piggle-Dy" proves they could be daft and ferocious in the same breath. Bassist Eddie Shaw called the method deconstructing and reconstructing, laying down bass and drums first and letting the rest pile on.

Pitchfork put it among the best albums of the 1960s, and it has turned up on more than one list of the best albums ever made. Nobody else, before or since, has tried quite so hard to look like a monastery and sound like a building site.

Also at Kops: more The Monks on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Munster Records (cat# MR 486), a reissue of the 1966 album.