Ipecac Recordings

One of the reasons the Melvins remain vital and productive as they approach 40 years as a band is they've never been afraid to try new things and give themselves fresh challenges. However, after a certain point, one begins to run short on new things to try, and their desire to push themselves out of their comfort zone sometimes takes them down blind alleys. This is the case with 2021's Five Legged Dog, which marks the first time the band, known for their crushing volume and downtuned heaviness, has recorded a full-length acoustic album. Perhaps thinking that wasn't novel enough in itself, they have has also made it an epic-scale career overview, featuring new interpretations of tunes from their catalog, as well as a handful of covers, in a marathon production that clocks in at two-and-a-half hours. For a group that's traded so heavily in volume throughout their career, Five Legged Dog finds the Melvins sounding game and committed to this experiment, and guitarist Buzz Osborne, bassist Steven McDonald, and drummer Dale Crover seem especially happy to try out vocal harmonies that would normally get lost over the sound of the overdriven amps and piledriver percussion. The details of McDonald's basslines and Crover's drumming are naturally a lot more clear in this context, and their playing reveals a welcome nuance, showing off sides of their music that they can't normally put into focus. However, while Osborne is a talented guitarist, he's not as interesting on acoustic player as he is on electric, and the textures and dynamics that are second nature in his usual performances are absent here. The simpler, low-volume arrangements also make it pretty clear that these songs were never meant to be heard in this fashion, and they haven't been able to recast them in an acoustic form that gives them force enough to compensate for the lack of volume and punch. The final nail in Five Legged Dog's coffin is its length: 35 or 40 minutes of this music might work as an experiment, but 150 minutes is numbing, especially given the lack of straightforward melodic hooks in the Melvins' songbook. The covers of numbers like the Turtles' "Outside Chance," the Rolling Stones' "Sway," and Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talking" end up being standouts because their relative simplicity, melodicism, and concision are reinforced by the acoustic trio treatment, while the sprawl of the Melvins originals only muddies the waters performed in this format. It's honestly admirable that the Melvins were willing to take a big risk with an album like Five Legged Dog, but the finished product fails more than it succeeds. © Mark Deming /TiVo

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It is one of those events that can’t be allowed to slip past without remark: a new Tomahawk, eight long years after the last studio album, is a gift out of the blue. This “supergroup” earns that status while debunking the entire concept, and not even the smartest old dog could teach these ones any new tricks. Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle), Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard), John Stanier (Helmet, Battles) and Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, Fantômas)… each boasts a CV that would be the envy of any veteran musician on the hunt for indie-rock credibility. And these guys still hit it like they’re only 40. Over the course of 20 years, Tomahawk have had fun mixing up country, indie rock, aggressive and dissonant sounds, spooky ambience out of a horror film, and powerhouse choruses to deliver a unique, genre-defying result. Hey, simply redoing Faith no Helmet with a shot of Mr. Lizard would have been too easy. What if music was the ultimate weapon in the fight against enforced immobility, a silver bullet to slay the possibility of spiraling out of control? That’s what these four friends must have been thinking as they named this 2021 album. Tonic Immobility is both a perfect summary of the group’s career achievements and a new avenue of exploration. Its power is coiled in the perfect balance between the vocal madness of Patton, zooming from crooner to howling psychopath in an instant, the inspired guitar of Denison and the impeccable execution of the rhythm section (check the precision of Stanier, who must have been born with a metronome in place of a brain). From opener Shhh!, unsettlingly understated to suddenly explosive, through massively powerful closer Dog Eat Dog, Tomahawk plays with sounds and moods (the spaghetti western accents in Doomsday Fatigue) and tosses out the rule book (the guitar in Predators and Scavengers would power a thrash metal album, while the quirky, unsettling vocal seems to float over it malignantly). Mainly, this combo outstrips the competition by never overdoing things, or doing things for too long – witness the average song length of three minutes. No need to drag things out when the collective expertise of these players is self-evident. Despite the apparent madness defining each song, Tomahawk is a real band – crazy, sure, but cohesive, not an outlet for musicians looking for experimentation. That makes all the difference, and in that regard, Tonic Immobility is an exemplary success: just the right amount of crazy without being over-the-top. © Chief Brody/Qobuz

As the years turned into decades, grunge forecasters the Melvins became more and more mercurial in their overall concept of where the band began and ended. Prolifically released albums took the form of wild collaborations with outside guests or lineup switches denoted by variations to their name, like "Melvins Lite" or "Los Melvins." Los Melvins were an incarnation including founding Melvin King Buzzo, longtime mainstay Dale Crover, and original drummer Mike Dillard. Working with God reunites this lineup (also sometimes referred to as "Melvins 1983" due to Dillard and Buzzo's 1983 formation of the band) for an album that includes returns to the band's early, sludgy power as well as some of the goofy juvenilia and lighthearted freakery of their 2010s output. Goofiness kicks things off as the album starts with a foul-mouthed parody of the Beach Boys' oldie "I Get Around," rewritten as "I Fuck Around." Despite the Melvins replacing the original lyrics with F-bombs whenever remotely possible, it's a pretty faithful cover, complete with better-than-expected falsetto background vocals. There are more acid-damaged moments of weirdness, like the demented introduction to "Brian, The Horse-Faced Goon," and the hard rock guitar antics on speedy songs like "Hund" and "Bouncing Rick." The best moments on Working with God are the ones where the Melvins lean into the syrupy, nauseous, downtuned proto-grunge they perfected on albums like Ozma and Bullhead. The slow tempos and simmering tension on tracks like "Caddy Daddy" and the lurking dread on "The Great Good Place" are classic throwback Melvins, but the album is padded out with riled-up outbursts like "Fuck You" and the truly bizarre choice to end with an a cappella cover of the barbershop quartet standard "Goodnight Sweet-Heart." As they approach 40 years of existence, the Melvins are still the masters of their own depraved domain. On Working with God, they flippantly experiment with ridiculous ideas only to effortlessly lay down some songs as heavy as the ones they were making before Nirvana left Sub Pop. With nothing to prove and never having seemed too concerned about impressing anyone, the Melvins continue to take their wild-eyed chaos anywhere they choose -- Working with God goes to some places that are strange and unforeseen even for them. © Fred Thomas /TiVo