written by Chris Familton

What can be one man’s alternative rock is another’s weirdo noise and The Melvins have intentionally teased both parties now for more than 25 years. The Bride Screamed Murder is their 20th studio album and continues their mission to satiate and frustrate.

Their previous release, Nude With Boots, was a fairly straight affair in the context of The Melvins and for much of TBSM they have continued that thunderous, galloping sludge metal that they do so well. The level of precision in Buzz Osborne’s guitar riffs, the grinding bass of Jared Warren and Dale Crover and Coady Willis’ monstrous drumming combine with clever time and tempo changes to ensure that the rush of metal is delivered without satanic pastiche and always with tongue in cheek.

Opening track The Water Glass is an example of The Melvins at their metallic best with its jet take-off guitars and rumbling drums that inspired a generation of drummers like Dave Grohl and Matt Cameron. But before you have time to settle into the song they hijack it and introduce call and response army chants and Animal Collective-like drumming. It works fantastically and sets the scene for an album of twists and turns.

When The Melvins succeed in nailing a track from start to finish the results are as good as any metal you’ll hear in 2010. Their ability to slide in subtle eastern and western motifs into a song like Pig House show there is a lot of thought and intellect at play amongst the gonzo bluster.

The rise and fall fuzz bass and guitar riffage makes Electric Flower a hip shaker as well as a head banger with Osborne’s strangled voice urgently instructing and proclaiming over the surging, incessant din. The flip-side of the rhythm and noise comes with Hospital Up, the best track on TBSM. Melodies are restrained and almost soothing yet there is still a solid backbone to the music, muscular and sensitive at the same time. There is a catchy chorus at work that pulls together all the contradictions of The Melvins into 5 absorbing minutes.

The ‘no way’ moment of the album is the band’s cover of The Who’s My Generation, slowed and weighed down by a swaying gravestone. It lumbers long with much more of a dark nihilism than the brash swagger of the original. Re-contextualised for a generation of doom and pessimism where the drugs bring you down instead of keeping you up it works brilliantly after your brain shifts from the initial surprise at the song being covered.

On The Bride Screamed Murder The Melvins continue to surprise, excite and often leave you hanging – exactly as they mean to. There is no great departure from what they have done since the early 80s and they have yet again refused to settle into middle age gracefully. For that we should thank them profusely.

This review first appeared on Fasterlouder