Melvins: A Senile Animal
Between their greatest hits, live, collaborative, and 25-year-old-demo releases, it’s sometimes hard to remember that Melvins do hit the studio every few years to release new music as a band. They do, though. They’ve got a new album due out next week, and this one, from 2006, is their first since 2002’s excellent Hostile Ambient Takeover.
For a long time I didn’t consider Melvins one of my favorite bands, my opinion probably overly-colored by my young experience with “Cow” from 1991’s Bullhead, which starts with one slow drum beat for what feels like several minutes. Over the years I’ve grown to appreciate their “one long note” and noisy output, but it’s still not the type of thing you think of as being enjoyable leisurely listening. F**k that, though. There’s way too much awesome, accessible music in their catalog to ignore it any longer. Melvins is my favorite band.
Oh, that feels so good to say. For about 13 years I’ve been describing Mr. Bungle as my favorite band, and they haven’t put out an album for nine years. “You know Faith No More?” my explanation would begin. No longer. I’ll still have to explain to everybody who Melvins is (which is a tragedy in at least two ways), but now I can at least point to a band who is continuing to add to their legacy, and awesomely so. Unless I found out lead singer King Buzzo is some kind of horrible criminal before the birth of my first son, that son will be named after him to honor his contribution to music and the human condition.
You can put A Senile Animal right up near the top of the list as one of Melvins’ best in their extensive discography. It’s a good intro to the band, too, as it’s mostly straight-forward aggressive, thrashy stuff. They’ve put aside the molasses-paced sludge for at least one album in favor of a tight, clean, but still absolutely huge sound. They even implement hand claps on “A History Of Drunks.” Melvins are special because of all of what they are, but when they release an album this accessible and fantastic, to go along with other classics like Houdini, Stoner Witch, and Hostile Ambient Takeover, you can’t help but wondering if I’d have to introduce them to fewer people if they had decided just to be a metal band.
Things get a bit repetitively mundane near the end, starting at about “The Mechanical Bride.” Up until that point, though, this was on a five-lunchbox trajectory. “The Hawk” is the Best Song Ever, and I encourage you to check it out if you’ve ever been curious about Melvins or wonder what all the fuss was about.
Rating:
Mixers: “The Talking Horse,” “Rat-Faced Granny,” “The Hawk,” “You’ve Never Been Right”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Houdini Live—A Live History of Gluttony and Lust and Melvins + Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)
Tags: 2006, 4.5 lunchboxes, Best Song Ever, CD reviews, music, new favorite band
July 16th, 2008 at 8:18 am
[...] Shows Most,” and “Repulsion” came close. Non-keepers: “Dime Lined Divide” Filed Between: A Senile Animal and Melvins+Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman [...]
August 4th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
[...] show largely featured songs from A Senile Animal and, to a lesser extent, the brand new Nude With Boots. They did stretch things from those [...]