MELVINS - 'THE BRIDE SCREAMED MURDER'

Given how overused a cliché it is, it's probably about time the old line about the only certain things in life being death and taxes was updated to include Melvins (well, and Neurosis but that's a different matter). To refer to King Buzzo and co's output as merely prolific is like suggesting George Carlin was perhaps a bit funny. Though it's not their first release of the new decade, it's the first full-length and the first shot over the bow of anybody suggesting Melvins are treading water. If '(A) Senile Animal' was the Melvins mark on the 2000s then 'The Bride...' may well already be their mark on this decade. Opening number 'The Water Glass' kicks off with a riff so deliciously Melvins if you could bake a cake from the sound waves it would taste like Buzzo's hair. It's a jagged, twisted rhythmic mindfuck that half sounds like the noise of an old dot-matrix printer combined with a worn tape of six songs playing over the top of each other. And it's over in less than a minute, leaving the rest of the song to introduce their latest fixation, military cadence (and more marching drums). It's like a dance party in a barracks, with call and response vocals mixing with the drum line breakdowns of Messrs. Crover and Willis and it's catchier than chicken pox at pre-school.

'Evil New War God' is Melvins 101 with those riffs, drums and trademark vocals that it's impossible not the love, while 'I'll Finish You Off' is more of an epic doom number with drudging riffs and higher pitched singing before heading into a more of a key-backed funereal march with some fairly creepy child-like vocals crawling in at the end. It's not until 'Inhumanity And Death' rears it's fuzzy-fro'd head that the pace picks up again to something more frantic, with an early Soundgarden feel to the heft of the riffs making it the sort of song to shave cats to and shout at the cheese in the supermarket while wearing a wedding dress.

Which is the perfect preparation for the lurching drawl of one of the oddest covers of 'My Generation' you are ever likely to hear. It stumbles around like an alcoholic after last orders have been called at the bar while Buzzo sneers out the lyrics as if he's addressing them to the unpopular ginger kid at school who's complaining nobody wants to play with him. Eventually it descends into a spaced out psych-jam, which is the perfect time to get out the Ketamine if you've been to apprehensive until now as closing track 'P.G. X 3' is a odd combination of Americana folksy-ness and church monk vocals before descending into typical Melvins nonsense territory that you'll have to wait and hear. In short, this is a Melvins album. It's a mindbending journey through time, space and the fretboard and if they manage to maintain the pace and push out albums as good or better than 'The Bride...' then 2010 is going to be a very good decade. And we can be thankful that we can probably expect another one or two albums and handful of other releases before the impending apocalypse, because there'd be no better soundtrack to the end of the world.

[8] JAMES MINTON