Tarantula Heart

Album review

Precursors of grunge and tireless champions of all things abrasive, the Melvins are still trying new things on Tarantula Heart, their 27th studio album in a decades-long run of pushing the boundaries of unholy noise. The main thing that makes this monolithic album different from much of the band's catalog is its construction. The Melvins first tracked a series of ideas, parts, and miscellaneous jams, and later edited songs together from the collected chaos, adding new parts to the Frankenstein-ed structures. They cited Miles Davis' editing process on albums like Big Fun and On the Corner as a huge point of inspiration for this idea. The album begins with the most aggressive example of this patchwork approach, the 19-minute long "Pain Equals Funny." It's less a traditional song than a collage of the kind of sledgehammer riffs the Melvins excel at, connected by passages of distorted drum sounds, time-stretched digital processing, and formless feedback. "Working the Ditch" recalls the heaviness of the band's Ozma era, opening with slow, dual drums before kicking into a storm of downtuned guitars chugging along at a grueling pace. King Buzzo growls and curses over the song until it starts to feel like being dragged half-conscious through a ditch. The odd punk of "She's Got Weird Arms" is part Devo, part Gong, part Spinal Tap, and all Melvins, while "Allergic to Food" rocks out at a fast and frantic pace, featuring We Are the Asteroid/Ed Hall member Gary Chester on additional guitar, and recalling the psychedelic intensity of the Butthole Surfers. Tarantula Heart's five tracks contain more than an album's worth of weirdness and power. It's a wild ride, even for the Melvins, and further solidifies their status as seemingly invincible practitioners of heavy, messed-up music.

© Fred Thomas /TiVo