The Melvins are a seriously bizarre group. Equal parts punishingly brutal stoner metal and freak show level oddity. Their new album “The Bride Screamed Murder” is no exception. I bought this on CD as I couldn’t find the vinyl and didn’t want to wait to hear it. The CD itself is bizarre. The back and front covers are transposed which caused me some initial confusion when trying to open the fucker up and get at the disc. It’s on Mike Patton’s (Faith No More, Tomahawk, Mr. Bungle, etc etc etc) Ipecac Recordings imprint, which makes perfect sense cause like The Melvins he is a study in some bizarre music as well. Don’t believe me? Patton’s new album “Mondo Cane” is him doing Italian opera backed by an orchestra. As bizarre as that sounds it’s actually pretty damn good. Look not all albums need to make sense. Sometimes a little auditory confusion is good for the ears and the soul. And that’s why I’m giving this new Melvins album the T stamp of approval. It’s weird as hell in parts but fuck me it’s fully committed to its insanity. And that’s applaudable.
These days The Melvins consist of King Buzzo and Dale Crover (the two original Melvins) and Coady Willis and Jared Warren (2/3 of the members that make up Big Business). The album was recorded by Toshi Kasai (the other 1/3 of Big Business). So basically it’s The Melvins backed by Big Business. This shouldn’t be confused as the other way around. Big Business is fantastic in their own right and surely fit in with the Stoner Rock genre The Melvins helped create, but they’re still two very different bands. Big Business just doesn’t reach that same level of “what the fuck am I listening to” that The Melvins do. Really. I had my iPod on shuffle in the car the other day and PG x 3 came on and my wife literally asked “what the fuck am I listening to” and made me change it. It wasn’t that it was a bad song really. But when you don’t listen to it in the context of the album it really just makes no fucking sense.
That’s not to say this album makes any sense listened to from beginning to end either. But at least it evokes enough of a strange mood that the songs make sense in context with the others. Most bizarre of all is The Melvins extremely loose interpretation of The Who’s My Generation. They butcher the song to the point of making it unrecognizable as a cover. They poke fun of it by singing the words “my generation” to the tune of My Sharona (they don’t even do this during their cover of My Generation but earlier in the album during another song that has nothing to do with My Generation as far as I can tell). They just utterly fucking destroy it. And look. Good or bad. They go for it. At another point in the album they go from some of the most heavy ass stoner metal I’ve ever heard into a military chant. HOO RAH! Again. I can’t judge, it’s just all too much to take in. You just kinda have to strap yourself in and go for the ride.
So T stamp of approval or not, is “The Bride Screamed Murder” a good album? Fuggit. I’ma say yes. I can’t really prove it isn’t.
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