SHOCKHOUND: That balance, between the big rock songs and the garage-y psychedelia, always seems to shift from one Monster Magnet album to the next. But 2007’s 4-Way Diablo, while it has some great moments, came off as kind of a mess. In retrospect, how much of that was due to the drug problems you were dealing with at the time?
WYNDORF: If I were able to do it again, I would’ve written more of the garage stuff; I would’ve taken the big rock songs off the album, and made it all garage. That’s the stuff I was happy with; there were some big rockers that just didn’t sound like they had the energy behind ‘em that they should have. 4-Way Diablo is a really mess because it’s basically pieces of music that, for the most part, I hadn’t used for [2004’s] Monolithic Baby! At that point, we were touring like crazy, and that’s when I got addicted to these pills. I went to a doctor, and I told him, “I can’t sleep — I’m having too much fun being up and I need to go down exactly when I want to go down. I want you to give me something [where] within fifteen minutes I will be down like a wild animal.” He gave me basically the strongest, most fast-acting thing on the market — it’s called Temazepam. I didn’t know it was an anti-anxiety drug until later; I was just like, “Good, give me a downer.” By the time it came to write 4-Way Diablo, my doctor pulled me off the pills because he was under investigation from the DEA — yeah, that guy’s in jail now — and I go into this maddened, fucking crazed state. You don’t want to go off that shit fast. It turns you into a crazy man, it’s worse than heroin. So me being the control freak that I am, instead of telling everyone in the world that I’m completely out of my mind, I’m saying, “Everything’s fine, the record’s coming out!” I couldn’t believe the record actually came out. [Laughs] I never showed up to the studio, so I wasn’t around when this thing was recording; I was in this apartment complex freaking the fuck out! Just madly, quickly, diving into madness. I finally called my girlfriend and asked her, “Please put me on a flight home, I’m going into rehab.” That was my first rehab, ever. I was more afraid of going to rehab than dying of drugs! The boys recorded 4-Way Diablo while I was in rehab. It was my arrangements, my songs, but they recorded that thing themselves. So I came back to finish the record immediately after I started to get my mind back. At that point, that thing was so far removed from me I didn’t know what it was, all I could do is salt and pepper it.