One inescapable fact about the wonderful and frightening musical world of the MELVINS, is that you can absolutely, definitely shove your expectations up your pipe. Instinctively disinclined to do the obvious, to repeat themselves, or to kowtow to others’ notion of what this amorphous and legendary band should be doing, Buzz Oborne‘s deathless eccentrics have been making fascinating, fucked up rock ‘n’ roll records for more than 40 years, and as recent touring with NAPALM DEATH seems to confirm, they continue to have a rather lovely time making people’s ears bleed.
Their studio work has been particularly strong in recent times. Last year’s “Tarantula Heart” was critically lauded, with whispers that it might have been the best MELVINS album since “Houdini”. In truth, they have released so many albums since 1993 that it may be impossible to judge, but “Tarantula Heart” was undoubtedly top-tier MELVINS: big, riffy, grotesque and hypnotic, with refined punk and power-pop sensibilities gently sprinkled over the top. A swift follow-up, “Thunderball” is cut from the same cloth, but with an even greater dedication to gnarly, doomed-out riffing, and a woozy, psychedelic streak a mile wide. It begins with “King of Rome”, a fast, fierce and frantic barn-burner, with taut and knotty noise rock riffs delivered at punk rock pace. All done and dusted in 199 seconds, it seems a mischievous way to begin an album that is otherwise populated with vast, thunderous epics, but MELVINS will be MELVINS. Curious interlude “Vomit of Clarity” follows, and is barely there at all, for all its atmospheric found sounds and stark, made-for-headphones street ambience.
The real meat of the matter arrives with “Short Hair With A Wig”, a languid, dirt-metal sprawl that creeps along with real menace and utmost fealty to the riff. Dubbed-out surrealist detours provide the perfect backdrop for Oborne‘s portentous, monotone vocals, which emerge from a watery tumult, ushering in another destructive brick wall of riffs. At times it sounds a lot like “Holy Mountain”-era SLEEP. At others it sounds like the heaviest space rock ever conceived, alien bleeps and squiggles included. Either way, it sounds like MELVINS in the throes of a sustained renaissance, and it’s fantastic. It concludes in a cacophony of slow-drifting ambient scree, only for listeners to be slapped awake by “Victory of the Pyramids”, an epic exercise in highly evolved punk rock that is as urgent and exciting as anything any incarnation of this band have done in decades. On “Thunderball”, MELVINS are Buzz Oborne and Mike Dillard (drums),both from the 1983 lineup, with a little help from electronic ingenue Void Manes and noise terrorist Ni Maîtres. The result is music that sparks and grinds with the same myopic passion that drove these inveterate weirdos to start creating art in the first place. “Victory of the Pyramids” veers majestically off course, into dark and sinister prog territory, it is still audibly tethered to the riff-worshipping ethos that informed “Gluey Porch Treatments” back in 1987 and inspired by the same desire to subvert every cliché. The closing “Venus Blood” is, in part, a superficially conventional doom metal slow burner, but as it flexes its muscles over eight monstrous minutes, it oozes weirdness and claustrophobia, extinguishing light with every visceral, primitive riff, sounding perpetually on the edge of a violent outburst. Again, fantastic stuff.
Not many bands retain the ability to dazzle after four decades of active service, but MELVINS are not like other bands. “Thunderball” is as fresh and fearless as anything in the Californians’ illustrious catalogue, and you can bang your head to it too, albeit quite slowly.
Source: blabbermouth.net
