Track Listing

1. The Kicking Machine
2. Billy Fish
3. Dog Island
4. Dies Iraea
5. Suicide In Progress
6. The Smiling Cobra
7. Nude With Boots
8. Flush
9. The Stupid Creep
10. The Savage Hippy
11. It Tastes Better Than The Truth

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23908 in Music
• Released on: 2008-07-08
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Album Description
In 2006 the Melvins released (A) Senile Animal, some 22 years after they started the band released one of the best received records of their career. The album marked the end of a revolving door of musicians with the very welcome annexation of Jared and Coady of Big Business. The refreshed quartet, now featuring double drummers, graced the cover of The Wire, received a 5/5 in Alternative Press, a 9/10 in Revolver and Pitchfork commented, "(A) Senile Animal stands as the band's most no-frills, accessible, and flat-out best album since Stoner Witch."

Now the band returns with "Nude With Boots" (July 8, Ipecac). Recorded in Los Angeles earlier this year, the eleven track album cements the resurgence of The Melvins. Tour dates are forthcoming.

About the Artist
It's 2008 and The Melvins are still called "family entertainment on another level." Almost 25 years, over 25 albums and still counting. Maybe they're just too dumb to quit.

The band still includes founding member King Buzzo and almost founding member Dale Crover, and they STILL have the Big Business guys Jared Warren and Coady Willis playing with them. This is extraordinary considering how hard it is for bass players and others to stick around the Melvins camp for more than two minutes. Everyone always loses their minds with or without drugs, but mostly with. They can't explain why, but the list of former members is about 40 and counting. Well, 40 might be a bit of an exaggeration but not by much.

The Melvins have been a band for a long, long, long, long time... A long, long, long time. They're somewhere in between a novelty act and yesterdays news. It's a strange place for a band with a Peter Pan complex to be in but there it is!

What the hell right?

We ALL want to just get on a space ship and watch the earth explode, don't we?

As hard as it might be to believe, The Melvins have a NEW album in the can! It's called Nude With Boots and is scheduled for a July 8 release. This is good news because it means the boys will be hitting the road again in the United States AND in Europe! The rest of the world could follow, but who knows? Hell, that would be like eight months from now and it's hard to plan that far ahead. Nude With Boots was recorded in Hollywood in a couple of weeks give or take a day or two and the boys seem to be extremely happy with the outcome. It's good... Groovy good! They played it for their wives and girlfriends and they seemed to like it so HERE WE GO!

Well... The Melvins have put out a ton of albums and done a shit-load of touring in their vast 24 year musical career but nobody is offering them a TV show, and I don't mean a bogus "reality" show I mean a show like Sha-Na-Na had in the late 70's. It's REALLY bogus. A Melvins show seems like a no brainer, but the world is not a right place. If you don't pay attention to TV then you can't realize just how bad it really is.

The Melvins' influence is vast and incomparable. It's global baby, and AND King Buzzo has even been accused of attempted murder! What the fuck is that? You know it HAS to be bullshit because when the King starts something, he finishes it. He's never ATTEMPTED anything in his life. He gets the job done, and so do the Melvins.

When does the man get here with all the candy?

Customer Reviews

Getting in a Groove
An amazing thing has happened with this album; it seems a lot like the Melvin's last album ("Senile Animal"). Consistency has never been a major concern for the band, but maybe they just decided not to release everything they'd come up with lately in an omnibus edition. In any case, here we are, treated with another Melvins album long after Grunge is dead, and most of the Indie bands that came after the Melvins originally helped to chart Indie in the first place (without ever making heaps of money at it) are also dead or have become self-parodies. And while all of the reviews here so far are enthusiastic, as often happens with Melvins reviews, there tends not to be a lot of detail. Here's some detail.

The Kicking Machine, at 2'44", gets things started. Yes, that opening guitar line is almost pop, but don't ignore that the song started with a gunked out drum noise and chime. If the Melvins have learned nothing else from many years of knowing Mike Patton, it's how to never miss a chance to put some odd bits together. Harmonized vocals ("little horned animals"), and up-tempo drums crisscross through the guitar lick for a bit before the "real" riff starts off; one of those marvelously non-4/4 seeming things kicking along with its unpredictable but oh-so-right changes. Boom-boom-boom, and it's over.

"Billy Fish," at 3'52", starts with a bunch of rolling drums that go on long enough to give you ample time to imagine 5 or 6 different riffs to come--but as usual the one that arrives hearkens more back to the Melvins' Houdini than anything you might have imagined. But even this proves to be a dodge; when the vocals finally set in, with Buzz's still excellent-sounding voice, the sound is grungy, buzzy, and kicking along at a grinning hyena-lope. Certainly, the endless quest for a bassist has finally been answered. Verse-chorus, and suddenly everything stops to go back to the opening drums; they weren't an introduction after all. A repeat of the buzz-grunge follows, but morphs into something completely new for the last minute of the song, though the new bit seems to follow inevitably from the front part. How do they make it all make sense?

"Dog Island," at 7'32", time-wise suggests a sludgy epic, and the opening *boom* and fuzzy down-tuned guitars and occasional tweaked high notes that escape the speakers seems to bear this out. (Check out the yummy tube-amp/Les Paul sounding notes oozing around.) Truthfully, the lick itself is probably worth the album--one of those chugging things with accents in all kinds of throat-grabbing places that only the Melvins seem to know how to do consistently. And if it just kept this up for 7 minutes, it'd be awesome enough, but at 3'20" suddenly the base drops an octave, the guitars start wailing (and you recognize where you sense this riff from, "The Maggot"), as it scoots into something else. Suddenly the bass drops again, and the vocals come in with all kinds of reverb, the sound-guy slides up the volume slider--epic begins to occur. At around 5'45", the band try to find their way out of the mood they've created, more or less, ending on the predictable cliche of drums, but the journey was still worth it.

"Dies Iraea," at 4'33" (funky spelling notwithstanding) is actually a cover of a Catholic medieval chant, the famous "Day of Wrath." (You'll know the melody, famously deployed at the beginning of Kubrick's "The Shining".) I'd guess Mike Patton suggested they cover this, but it's done with all the slow oozing power that the piece deserves, including a trailing off noisescape that manages to invoke "The Shining". (For all I know, maybe they're covering that movie's soundtrack.) At the very least, it's a stark contrast to the music that's gone before.

"Suicide in Progress," at 4'46", (if it's stoner rock at all) is mightily accelerated, but aficionados, please note (what would be) the extraordinarily complex guitar line for a stoner-rock outfit. For the first 90 seconds of the song, you might think it was a prog-rock instrumental, changing time signatures and all. Comes the full-stop, and then possibly a restatement of the song at 1/4 speed now, and a texture like many songs on "The Bootlicker". (Lyrics: "There's a little animal" ... a return from the first song? To be fair, Buzz's lyrics may make sense to him somehow, but one of the enduring joys of the Melvins is the total incongruity of the words; it's amazing Buzz can remember them.) Fade-out ... and suddenly, a brief quasi-industrial noisefest ... because that's how a proper Melvins song is put together.

"The Smiling Cobra," at 3'42", drives immediately through your forehead with another jumping, shifting guitar line intermixed with a few power chords to try to get a grip on, but generally it smashes around, off-beat accents and all, straight-ahead growling vocals ... all in the first 90 seconds. So of course you need a guitar solo then, and then morph away into a completely new riff. (It's the sound of the guitars, in particular that's so satisfying here.) You could mistake this for "typical" stoner rock, but not with headphones on.

"Nude with Boots," at 3'35", starts out more thumping drums, and then an exceptionally poppy/friendly guitar line. (Check out the bass guitar, though). And stays there ... surprise. I'd swear this was a cover, or not written by Buzz/Dale. What follows, "Flush," at 1'07", is a noisescape. Now, this is a review, not an analysis, but since (for me) "Nude with Boots" is the least satisfying song on the album for me, I find it charming that the next song flushes it, as it were. If nothing else, the swing from "pop" to "noise" couldn't be more apt as a contrast. (In an unforgivably interpretive mode, I have this dim suspicion "Nude with Boots" and "Flush" are references, maybe in title alone, to Sabbath's "Fairies Wear Boots" and "Fluff".)

"The Stupid Creep," at 1'30", gets a lot done in its 90 seconds, but is mostly a palatte-cleanser of aggressive guitars and slithering bass lines that ends before it seems to start. Guerilla punk-sludge.

"The Savage Hippy," at 3'34" (contrasting with the stupid creep somehow?) is a mini-epic--huge drums boom incessantly, while down-tuned bass creeps around at unusually low subsonics--cymbals fill the sound with white noise, lyrics (sneer-howled) are buried in the miasma, while the guitar churns out power chords and string-scratches. A huge fish-flopping death-wail, and another reason why one needs to buy Melvin albums. The "chorus" (if you can find it) pays for the disc.

"It Tastes Better than the Truth," at 5'20, closes the album with martial drum, distorted mincing vocals, rising and falling skysaw guitars, and miscellaneous screams over the top. In the sense that this stew repeats to the end, it's a drone, and belligerently anti and satisfying; certainly a toothy-grinned way to end an album, but still nice enough to be programmed out when its charms wear thin.

Bottom line. If you liked "Senile Animal," you'll almost certainly like this. If nothing else, over the years, the Melvins have gotten better at making themselves sound awesome on disc--"Ozma" and "Bullhead" sound almost like novelties. Major-label recording maybe taught them the tricks; Ipecac has (continued) to give them all the leeway they need. Results: another worthy step forward in the Melvins canon. (And for any who wonder why they keep at it--watch Buzz playing "Dog Island" and you'll see; the fire is still there. And it here too.)

hahahaha awesome yet again
There's a song on this album called DOG ISLAND. DOG ISLAND. FIVE STARS.

The production is great but you really have to see them perform it live (with two drummers) to feel the album as intended. They've done it once again, the Melvins feel fresh and new but will not disappoint longtime fans. Long live King Buzzo.

this review is very biased
I might as well get it out of the way, Melvins are my absolute favorite band and I love everything they have put out including Colossus of Destiny so this review is very biased. On Nude With Boots, the band shows they continue to get better as the years go by. Since the addition of Jared and Coady from Big Business in 2006, the band's sound as gotten much fuller and the guys from BB seem to bring their own influence to the Melvins sound. Some people have mentioned that this album sounds almost too "radio friendly", but I think that is just Buzzo doing whatever the hell he feels like as he has always done. I love all the songs on NWB including the more radio friendly tunes. I also really dig 'Dies Iraea' which is their take on the song from the beginning of 'The Shining'. The band do a great job with this song and it is easy for me to imagine this version at the beginning of the movie instead. Now, since I really suck at writing reviews, I am leaving. Thanks for reading this if you have taken the time