With their warped sense of humour, unique style and penchant for musically doing whatever the f-they want, (the) Melvins career has been a long and interesting one. From major label signings to being dropped to the present day, which sees them this year celebrating 30 years of being a band, Buzz and Dale at least, have seen it all.
Tres Cabrones (Ipecac), their 19th studio album, welcomes back original drummer Mike Dillard and it’s a record that once again proves why The Melvins’ long-standing career is fully justifiable.
As usual, the Washington four-piece have made an album that no-one should attempt to neat-pile into a generic category, mainly because Tres Cabrones has no such one to squeeze into. Ranging from 1 to 8-minutes long, the tracks have no time pattern, with long and sludgier tracks standing alongside shorter, satirical outbursts. For instance, ‘I Told You I Was Crazy,’ a slow and dense number, comes straight off the back of short parody track ’99 Bottles Of Beer,’ which sees the band chanting along to mostly abstract noise. Whilst expected, the latter of these types of songs (of which there’s 3) do become tiresome after your fourth hearing but everywhere else (the) Melvins bag of tricks is never-endingly brilliant to hear.
Straight-up punk fused with solos (‘Walter’s Lips’), noise rock mixed with acoustic endings (‘Dogs and Cattle Prods’) and metal chugs merged with grungy guitar strums (‘City Dump’), there’s no originality spared on Tres Cabrones. Often lyrically bizarre and, for the most part, well-musically crafted, (the) Melvins latest album may have a few downs but the innovative ups more than outweigh these small annoyances. Their career may be approaching its more mature stages, but hanging up their guitars in favour of golf clubs certainly doesn’t look likely in the near future, a situation we should all be thankful for.
7.5/10.0
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Emma Quinlan
