Let’s reminisce. It’s been almost 25 years since King Buzzo (guitar, vocals) and Dale Crover (drums, vocals) merged to form The Melvins. And it’s been 25 years that their instrumental interplay has been pressure-tight. It’s been 20 years since they all but founded grunge music (of which they were never truly a part) and when they last had any sort of lineup stability at bass guitar. Like the Blob of late-’50s horror, The Melvins have become both amorphous and legendary, feeding on cult fandom and an unrelenting discography. They’re a band whose name has always been at the cusp of fame — short-lived major label contracts (Atlantic), mentions in an indie blockbuster film (Juno), shoulder-rubbing with rock superstars (Kurt Cobain) — but who were always too busy skulking in the underground, composing their next metallic dirge/electro-freak-out/Jello Biafra collaboration, to care.
Toggling between skull-melting sludge metal and meditative time signatures, The Melvins have, over the past quarter century, created some of the most innovative and confrontational music on record. Take virtually anything from their discography — from Bullhead/Eggnog EP’s (1991) “Boris”/“Charmicarmicat” to A Senile Animal’s (2006) “The Mechanical Bride” — and find the same parallel notions of collision and rumination. Crover’s precision and flailing drumming, always appropriately adorned and astounding, is foremost in achieving this. Pulsing like an artery, sparking like a synapse, he frames every movement, every breakdown, every crash into mayhem. And that says nothing for Buzzo’s guitar, which unleashes ages of riffs and drones that often span several measures.
These things established, Nude With Boots, The Melvins’ 19th LP and 7th with Ipecac, does nothing to sway or squander its listeners. That’s to say, while offering nothing revolutionary, Nude With Boots does much to bolster the band's output, with a wrench or two thrown in for good measure. As with 2006’s A Senile Animal, this album includes Big Business’ rhythm section members Jared Warren (bass) and Coady Ellis (drums). This convergence, which now includes two drummers, doesn’t produce the percussive flurry that one would expect. Instead, the listener is (save the album’s furious, beat-driven closers “The Savage Hippy” and “It Tastes Better Than the Truth”) overwhelmed by the subtlety and nuance of the rhythm of each track.
Like many of their best records, Nude With Boots is full of texture, channeling from slabs of their patented slow-motion metal ( “The Smiling Cobra,” “Dog Island”) to atmospheric drone (“Flush”) to near standard-fare pop-rock (“Nude With Boots”). “Dies Iraea” is haunting and ritualistic with its dark hover of guitars and rings of stray percussion. The album’s most dynamic track, “Suicide in Progress,” enters as a mid-tempo rocker before melting into a slow dirge that accompanies King Buzzo’s turncoat-preacher vocals. Here he snarls the eerily isolating lines, “There are lots of makeshift wonders/ Seven in the world/ Five of them will not be noticed/ And three will not be heard.”
Throughout their early career, The Melvins had the ability to engage an audience just as easily as they could alienate it. Now with legions of fans and acclaim on their side, that doesn’t happen anymore. Instead, they’ve become one of the most prolific staples of the American underground. And it’s there that Nude With Boots is a sound and welcome contribution.