Search - Melvins :: Maggot

Heavy and to the point

04/11/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Quite frankly a lot of reviewers have hit the nail on the head with this album.In a word it is indeed HEAVY.I dare say this 10 times heavier than your favorite "nu-metal" band and easily 1000 times more intelligent.Obviously you're here because you are a melvins fan already ,or ,looking to become one.I dont know if a newbie would quite understand the magnitude of this ,or the other two albums in the trilogy,at least not fully...until they have heard some of the previous albums.So if you are new I suggest 1"26 Songs',"Ozma" or their more accessible "Stoner Witch" and "Houdini".Now for those of you who already know them but dont know the album...heres a quick rundown.The first 4 tracks are actually one song (AMAZON) and are very punk meets sludge in style.Awesome opener.All the rest of the songs are divided into 2 tracks....for what reason i dont know,but it does not detract from any of the songs at all.Every song has a different vibe ,but all stay in the same heavy vein as the others.I must say I was completley blown away by the cover of "The Green Manalishi"...I assure you that you havent heard this song until you hear the Melvins version of it.Some Melvins cds are hit and miss as far as overall album feel...this is not one of them.Solid from track 1-16.....Try it out...if you're a fan....you WILL like it."

Great Start for the a Trilogy

Snow Leopard | Urbana, IL | 11/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Good god, this is a heavy crazy album. What a treat. As part of a trilogy of albums (The Bootlicker, and the Crybaby also), it can be considered on its own, or as part of the larger three-disc work.



Somewhat mysteriously, each of the 8 songs on the disc are split into two tracks; one wonders if this is related to Mike Patton's Fantomas-like division of songs apparently at random. In any case, the tracks run together seamlessly and the conceit is at least provocative, if nothing else.



"Amazon," totaling 1'43", amusingly starts with a whacked out, "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man," and then the music immediately launches into a huge, fast aggressive guitar fest, with Buzz's vocals resembling Jonathan Davis nasality echoing over them. The riff here in particular exploits that great, gorgeous, giant guitar sound Buzz loves to use.



"AMAZON," totaling 5'44", is a mid tempo death-trot, with yummy note-bends providing most of the riff itself, punctuated by Dale banging away in counterpoint drums. The vocals here are overdubbed husky-guttural sarcasm and high nasal twanginess almost lost in the mix. After a few choruses, Buzz unleashes the noise-solo, multiple-tracked feedback, squelching, distortion. Without headphones, this might sound like repetitious mush--and what great repetitious mush anyway--but there's more going on that a set of bad speakers might immediately disclose.



"We all love JUDY," at 2'32", has all the earmarks of one of those short pieces from Gluey Porch Treatments, with 15 some odd years of compositional knowledge added to it. Mostly a relentlessly sawing, heavy riff, and echoing, indecipherable lyrics floating over the top of it, at the end, the signature guitar doubling just adds that much more heft to the whole short affair.



"Manky," at 7'27", is one of the epics on this album. It starts, self-indulgently, with a single bass drone that slowly rises, then falls again. Another reviewer elsewhere has commented that the Melvins are fundamentally all about anticipation; that's what you get here. What is going on? Where is this going? And if you already know the song, it's "Ooh, any second now, it'll start." One of the all-time greatest--no, seriously--chug-a-lug death grinds ever committed to tape, vocals here with psycho-killer growling and then .... A series of bent, distorted growling guitar lines--repeated four time, and thank goodness for that. Happily the song is content just to cycle through this, and then just SITS on the chug-a-lug for almost 3 minutes to end the song. For those paying close attention, this underlying riff which runs through the piece runs in a 4, 3, 3, 6 (with the on the first beat of each), with flanged and phased out drums skittering around through the mix. Again, headphones help to bring out the details. Someone complains about the repetitions on this album; this is probably the spot where. If all you are doing is listening to the guitar, it may indeed sound repetitious. The piece ends by returning to the nasty drone it started with, plus a sharp hiss of noise.



"The Green Manalishi (with the Two-Pronged Crown)," at 6'53", is a cover of a Peter Green song (an early member of Fleetwood Mac). I've never heard the original, but considering that this version is nearly 2 minutes longer than the original, I'm assuming it's slower and heavier. In any case, the song sounds entirely like it could have originated with the Melvins (except for the comprehensible lyrics), to say nothing of the fact that it is a building, grand and extremely musical version. The obligatory enormous guitar opens up over the whole thing, and then an unprecedentedly gorgeous guitar tone and solo starts sailing over the whole thing like some kind of mythical beast. "Beautiful" or "moved" are hardly ever words one would normally associate with the great effects the Melvins can achieve, but it really applies here--including even the howling, snarling guitar mess at the end. (Okay, well, maybe it's not beautiful, but it still fits.)



"The Horn Bearer," at 2'27", is another essay through the kind of "punk" (one really has to put that in quotation marks) that the Melvins are partially known for. Fast walls of noise--it'd be a lot of fun to see this one live.



"Judy," at 2'36," opens with a thrummy bass-only gig, that eventually has skysaws buzzing over it. Precisely NOT the kind of "punk" the Melvins are occasionally known for. Despite its length, it can still be described as a slowly developing, instrumental slush of noise--loud ambience, including someone hacking up a lung at the end.



"See How Pretty, See How Smart," at 10'32", is the other epic on the album, patiently working its lumbering, detailed noisescape in that way that only Melvins can. Super heavily reverbed vocals, echoing spacily over the lumbering thrum somehow seems like another arch commentary on the "Hey Mr. Tambourine Man" that started it all. There is indeed an enormous, cave-like trance quality here, but it's nothing like the peace and love of the 60s. Especially once the screaming starts. A great finish. And after several seconds of silence, there's a preview of the opening song on "The Bootlicker."



Overall, this is an exceptionally well sequenced album; it's certainly one of my favorites in the whole Melvins catalogue. Although the Melvins may sometimes be erratic, or become enamored with some effect or irony, when they are really in their groove, as they are here, the accolade of them being the most important band in the U.S. today sometimes even seems to fit."

See How Smart

Tom Chase | 03/06/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This might just be the heaviest album i have ever heard in my entire life"