Nude With Boots

iTunes Review

One of the few bands to successfully walk the line between punk, heavy metal, stoner rock, and grunge without falling too deep into any one camp while always keeping their sense of humor about them, the Melvins have issued many albums over the past twenty years that have greatly varied in quality. The band centers around the screaming vocal and guitar freakouts of Buzz Osborne (King Buzzo) and it’s his peculiar knack for quickly switching between accessible, even catchy, hard rock riffs (“Billy Fish,” “The Kicking Machine“), stoner rock downpours (“Dies Iraea,“ “The Savage Hippy”) and total all-out sonic assaults (“It Tastes Better Than The Truth”) that keep this Aberdeen, Washington quartet relevant after all these years. The band has endured a revolving door of bass players, but recently in the late ‘00s, they’ve managed to stabilize the line-up with the solid rhythm section from the band Big Business whose bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis back up the Melvins’ steady drummer Dale Crover for maximum apocalypse.