Melvins – Thunderball

vote
7.5

• Band:
  Melvins
• Duration: 00:34:03
• Available from: 04/18/2025
• Label:

• Ipecac Recordings

Streaming not yet available

Third disc for the Melvins 1983 training, aka one of the countless incarnations of this monstrous Always different, yet always very recognizable.
The experiment began in 2013 with “Tres Cabrones”: Dale Crover moved from the battery to bass to leave the seat to Mike Dillard, friend of King Buzzo from the first adolescence and drummer originally from Melvins, with whom he had limited himself to recording demo – first, in fact, of the entry into a stable Dale plan in the group.
It was then touched by “Working with God” in 2021, with the same trio in action, while this time the cards are stolen with more emphasis: only Buzz and Mike remain, as in the time of the school, with guests Ni Maîtres – that we have been able to know supporting the recent Osbourne/Dunn tour – to the double bass and the rifle that had already been remoled the Melvins at the time of ” Switch ”, to provide electronic disorders and sounds.
The result? We have already said it: they are always the Melvins, but with this hilarious ability to change enough skin to be once again appetizing. Five very different songs, with the initial “King of Rome” to suggest a Noise/Stoner approach: a very fat riff, a reverberated voice, dirty production, yet a melodical taste remarkable in three minutes of durability and away … and obviously you immediately change register with “Vomit of Clarity”: two minutes of disturbing sound effects, after which the leisure ended.
The following three songs are the most classic mastodons of the Melvins house, but here also the game of the continuous surprise continues, because in “Short hair with a wig” we are still reversed on the spipporals of machines, a double bass that overturns the shakes and slow rhythms, very slow, who almost transfigure the time and remind us who are the real putative fathers of the slut.
“Victory of the pyramids” sees the Melvins playing to make the rock band from the ranking, obviously in their own way: captivating riff, a refrain that immediately remains imprinted … and then, inevitable, the derailment towards hell, with Osborne to sing sycturally chasing a lysergic guitar, almost oriental in the sounds, dubbed (or tripled) by the two deals on loan. “Venus Blood” closes in perfect Melvins style: a lava, gloomy and dense casting, which turns on itself without surprises but with an excellent hypnotic sense, wrapping us with a malicious smile.
Overall, “Thunderball” is probably the most acidic and irrational journey made by the Melvins in recent years, and it is all to say; If you did not love them before, you will hardly be shaken by a very discontinuous disc in the sounds, but not in substance: there is a desire to have fun, showing a freshness that did not feel like several albums. It is no short, after forty -two years from those chatter between misfit in the last row of an hated American high school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwnepgw1qe