The Bride Screamed Murder or Hope I'm old before I start to suck?

Have you ever had a good time on bad drugs? It's like having a scab that's so painful when you pick it, you can't stop making yourself bleed because it feels too damn good. (the) Melvin’s have made the audio equivalent of bashing your toe with a ball peen hammer and loving every second of it. The last two Melvins records have seen cohesiveness in songwriting, not as apparent since Stoner Witch and Houdini. This, dare I say, near radio friendliness that has possessed (the) Melvins is due in no small part to Jared and Cody of Big Business, who joined the fold for 2006's (a) Senile Animal; arguably, one of the best Melvins records. (a) senile animal was home to A History of Badmen, an amazing magnum opus that found its way into a horrible Lindsay Lohan movie. (all Lindsay Lohan movies?) This record is not that record...at all. It's still got cohesiveness, but not the way Nude in Boots, and animal were. No, I would say this record is a total amalgamation of Big Buisness/Melvins aesthetic. It's raw, heavy and at times hard to listen to, but what the F$#@ did you buy a Melvins record for if not to blow out your speakers with heavy static and jazz interludes? The cover of My Generation, is almost mocking in it’s over expression "Hope I die before I get old." It seems that The Bride Screamed Murder is the melding point of new Melvins and old. It's more experimental than the last two records but, even in the dissonance the rhythms do enough to differentiate it from previous outings into noise. Speaking of rhythms, the wall of sound that is the Crover/Cody drum attack is so prevalent and awesome on this record, it starts out with a whole song written around the drum cadence. It's a mean record and stripped, but beefy at the same time. It's a big block engine purring with menace and screaming into the night with fury, insanity and a cock sure swagger that would scare the bejesus out of the average weekend warrior out for a drive. This is the new Melvins, staking their claim to a music scene that they very obviously helped to create. Much like the Who, the Melvins are legends in their own time, and thank god it took forever for them to get there. They didn't burn out, they didn't fade away, they just got stranger and better as they watched many of their contemporaries do the opposite.