The Melvins

The Bride Screamed Murder

(Ipecac)

Record Review by Patricio Maya

The Melvins do whatever the hell they want with their albums--that's no news. I love that about them. Well, for the most part. The Bride Screamed Murder, their 20th studio album, goes well beyond bearable musical idiosyncrasies. And yet, enough genius moments are scattered throughout the album to remind you that you're dealing with a band still capable of devastating power. 

Most frustrating of all, it sounds like the osteoporotic skeleton of what could have been a robust album. The first couple of songs come and go, clean-sounding and short, when at their best The Melvins sound as sludgy as mud. "The Water Glass," the first song, starts off strong, but ends up turning into tribal-sounding goofiness. The second song, "Evil New War God," picks up a little, delivers hints of the band's magic, but the Tito Puente percussion kills it. 

Not that having drums as a separate element in a song is always a bad idea. "Pig House," the third song, starts with some autocratic, attention-demanding drums, but only as a way to introduce a slashy guitar. That's why it works. The drums lead somewhere. 

After that the album kind of gets going. But it isn't until "Inhumanity and the Beast," the seventh track, that the dark, and gooey (though pretty fast) Melvins finally appear. A well-glued song like this isn't necessarily free from experimentation. "Inhumanity and Death" gets fractured into at least three differently-tempoed sections - song fragmentation is something they do all throughout this album - yet at three minutes long the sound remains quite tight. 

Maybe it took several crappy attempts to nail the album's sound. "My Generation," The Who's cover, creates something quite special in seven and a half minutes. It starts up as a rather straight cover: sludgy base and metal riffs. Nothing more than a Melvinization of The Who, if you will. But then a Pink Floyd-like wind noise emerges from somewhere (minus the 15-minute Pink Floyd-like excess) and the song gets carefully sliced up. Enter bells. Then an engine-like and slow guitar and low, deep and dispersed drums. It's like the original "My Generation"--before the wind noise--gets turned inside out. Pure atmosphere takes over. I thought of burnt debris floating in a dirty, smokey air, burnt bodies, the day after the apocalypse, stuff like that. You can read it as a cultural statement. It sure is a musical gem. 

Still, an album shouldn't be a collection of B-sides with a couple of great songs. I'm not trying to say that The Melvins have lost it. Quite the opposite. They seem to be in full experimentation mode, which is much better than most older bands. Clearly they still have enough fuel to create beautiful, abrasive noise. They just seemed to have rushed through The Bride Screamed Murder, making it a short, irregular album. 

During the last couple of minutes of the last song, "P.G. x 3," after some  ear-piercing feedback, all you can hear for a long time is the voice of what sounds like a retarded kid saying "four, four, four" over and over again with no music at all playing in the background. It's hard to imagine anyone banging their heads to "P.G. x 3" (well, maybe against the wall). I guess after almost 30 productive years The Melvins have earned self-indulgency rights. We just kinda have to deal with it. Or skip to the good songs.