Held by a Monster Magnet

Marilyn Manson won’t be the only hard-rock act with an MM monogram and a rebel-misfit attitude on stage when the high-profile Manson-Hole tour hits Southern California on Saturday and Sunday.

Lighting the fuse on the volatile package will be opening act Monster Magnet, a proud partisan of such hoary hard-rock traditions as hedonism, excess, aggression, defiance of authority and high volume. The Magnet message is summarized in leader Dave Wyndorf’s favorite concert gesture, the one-finger salute.

But this being the ‘90s, and Wyndorf being a smart cookie, the New Jersey foursome knows there’s only one way to avoid coming off like throwbacks. Accordingly, “Powertrip,” the band’s breakthrough album, bristles with irony and sarcasm as it both mocks and embraces the genre’s conventions.

“How could you not parody it?” says Wyndorf, 36. “It’s kind of built into it. . . . It’s not ‘Spinal Tap,’ but there’s a little bit of ‘Spinal Tap’ anyway. I defy anyone to form any kind of band and get a tour manager and not be Spinal Tap. It’s just impossible. I’ve seen rock bands cry watching ‘Spinal Tap.’ Not laugh, cry. That’s how real it is.”

Not too long ago, it all got a little too real for Wyndorf.

The group began in the late ‘80s and quickly drew an underground following with its crushing attack and comic-book sensibility. Moving to the major label A&M; for the 1993 album “Superjudge” and 1995’s “Dopes to Infinity” looked like a big career step, but Wyndorf came off Monster Magnet’s 1996 tour in poor health and with the band deep in debt. His growing disillusionment with the music business sent him into full retreat.

“I thought that I would continue music, but I probably wouldn’t do it on a major label in the United States,” says the singer, who proceeded to lie low in his Red Bank, N.J., home for a year and a half. “I’d probably do the ‘I’m moving to Holland’ routine. . . . Europe still operates on an ‘art first, commerce second’ basis. What a crazy concept.

“I said to the record company, ‘Why don’t we just end this easily and I’ll just go away?’ But they said, ‘No, no, no, we want you to make another record.’ So I said [he growls], ‘OK,’ . . . kind of hoping that they’d go away, but they didn’t go.”

Presented with the challenge, Wyndorf decided to get back to basics. In a Las Vegas motel, he wrote a song a day for 21 days, pouring out his resentments and airing his fascination with advertising and the information age.

Recording the songs quickly with his bandmates--bassist Joe Calandra, drummer Jon Kleiman and guitarist Ed Mundel--Wyndorf came up with “Powertrip,” an album that both satisfied its creator and went on to sell enough (close to 400,000) to bring Wyndorf back into the ring. Monster Magnet has opened for everyone from Portishead to Aerosmith, but the Marilyn Manson-Hole tour, with its potent personalities and barbarians-at-the-gates image, seems like a perfect platform.

“Manson I’ve known for years, and I’ve always felt an affinity with him,” Wyndorf says. “We come a lot from the same place, which is a place where no one really appreciated what we did. Now it’s kind of a celebration of the fact that he’s gotten so big, and the fact that we’re doin’ better. It’s a riot. It’s like a celebration of his doing it his way and me doing it my way and having it somewhat pay off. . . . Survival, I guess, would be the payoff.”

BE THERE

Marilyn Manson, Hole, Monster Magnet, Saturday at the Arrowhead Pond, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim, 7 p.m. Sold out. (714) 704-2500. Also Sunday at the Great Western Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood, 7 p.m. $35. (310) 419-3100. Tuesday at the San Diego Sports Arena, 3500 Sports Arena Blvd., San Diego, 7 p.m. $29.50. (619) 225-9813.