The Melvins Return To Its Murky Tone & Down Tuned Riffs On ‘Working With God’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Photo courtesy of the band

Alt-rock veterans The Melvins has returned to its roots with its twenty-ninth full-length album. Working with God reunites what the band calls Melvins 1983, the almost-founding lineup  – original guitarist Buzz Osbourne, original drummer Mike Dillard, and bassist Dale Crover, who joined the band when Dillard left in 1984.

While the band has gone through a lot of lineup shifts and musical experimentation over the years, Working with God sounds like vintage Melvins. It has the murky tone, the down-tuned heavy riffing, the Dadaist lyrics, the atypical time signatures. It pushes musical boundaries with its uncomfortable alchemy of contrasting styles, shoving psychedelic licks through punk power chords, playing heavy music at decidedly not-heavy tempos, and even defiling the Beach Boys. The ridiculously profane interpretation of “I Get Around” that opens the album is an early indication that the trio still doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Working with God sounds foreign in 2021, with its lack of polish, chaotic energy, and embracement of imperfection. “Negative No No” is a mid-tempo head-banger built around a thumping palm-muted riff and bludgeoning bassline. Osbourne’s voice ranges from low drone to bellow, sometimes unintelligible, buried under a wall of distortion, feedback, and pounding drums.

The album’s best song is its slowest, the grooving “Caddy Daddy.” “The words sound the same to me, top knot crying through history,” Osbourne sings over a nasty guitar riff that incorporates classic scales into trudging palm muting. In the chorus, the guitar riff drops out, replaced by a simple two-chord pattern that puts the emphasis on Crover’s bouncing bass. “The idea is all; we’re out of time,” Osbourne howls. The song is hypnotic, flexing its muscles with a fury belied by its lack of speed.

“Great Good Place” is an aggressive up-tempo track, layering guitar licks on top of the choppy rhythm. “Complain that it leads nowhere; that never stopped him before,” Osbourne sings, the song’s battering staccato attack letting up only long enough for a series of sustained string bends. The trio’s sludgy sound meets thrash metal intensity in the antagonistic “Bouncing Rick.” The frenetic riffing and tumultuous rhythm charge the song forward as if toward a stage dive.   

The Melvins is one of those bands that never achieved mainstream success but inspired generations of bands that did, content to fly under the radar without a care for whether anyone outside the band likes the music. Working with God is the first Melvins album by this lineup since Tres Cabrones in 2013. While it’s not as experimental as some of the Melvins’ work, it deftly captures the attitude, raw energy, and quirkiness that made the band one of rock’s most influential. No one played guitar like Osbourne back in 1983 and 38 years later, his approach is still distinctive. With its mix of punk and metal, thrashing speed with sludgy grooves, off-kilter rhythms and odd patterns, Working with God is a worthy addition to a Melvins catalog that would be equally revered if it had ended decades ago. 

 

Photo courtesy of the band

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