CD: The Melvins - Hold It In

It’s a rare year when 80s psychedelicists-with-a-black-sense-of-humour the Butthole Surfers stray into the studio. So when guitarist Paul Leary and bass player, Jeff Pinkus join up with Melvins’ mainstays, King Buzzo and Dale Clover, it’s not unreasonable to expect something special. Hold It In is not a disappointment and offers plenty of twisted, gonzo metal with Metallica-sized riffs, some completely whigged-out psychedelia and much inbetween.

The metal-with-a-twist of tunes like “Bride of Crankenstein” and “Sesame Street Meat” will certainly keep long-term fans of the Melvins happy with their Download-friendly thump. Things quickly take a turn for the weird, however, with the strange, psychedelic dream music of “Barcelonian Horseshoe Pit” that becomes a biblical storm of noise. “Eyes On You” takes the hook from Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation” and drags it out to rural Texas, while chanting “Hey neighbour, hope you don’t mind. I got my eyes on you” and “I Get Along” is cow punk liberally dipped in LSD. So it would be fair to say that the Butthole Surfers’ influence is evident in spades.

Hold It In’s collaboration is unsurprisingly most satisfying when the band manages to throw in both extremes of their sound. “Onions Make The Milk Taste Bad” opens up with some chugga-chugga Soundgarden-like stomping about before drifting off into some wild interludes of the spaced-out kind. “The Bunk Up” comes over like a Spinal Tap parody of Black Sabbath that lurches into a folkie passage which almost demands dancing dwarves. However, twelve minute closer “House Of Gasoline” is the tour de force of Hold It in. Starting off as a riff-tastic monster, it wanders in and out of spacey jams that would give 60s’ heroes, the MC5 a run for their money.

Hold It In is a fine rock album with a decidedly twisted sense of humour that suggests that the Melvins have still got plenty to offer.