Ahhh... I love reviewing albums by my favorite bands. Melvins is an amazing band of many faces. Their music ranges from slightly bluesy hard rock, to harsh noise, to thick sludge and drone. This particular album is mostly sludge and drone, with some bluesy hard rock mixed in. In addition, the frontman, and singer, of the Melvins is a guy with crazy hair named King Buzzo, so they've also got that going for them. Some quick facts about this album: it was originally called Lysol (as seen here), but the Melvins were sued by the Lysol corporation for using their name, and was forced to change the name. The Melvins opted to just remove the word Lysol from the right side of the album, and make it self titled. Despite this, fans still refer to the album as Lysol. The cover art is a painting of a sculpture named "Appeal to the Great Spirit". This image also appears on the cover of a Beach Boys live album, The Beach Boys in Concert. You may notice that I didn't include a link to listen to this album like I usually do. That is because I couldn't find this album anywhere even though the Melvins have most of their music available online, this album is nowhere to be found, so if you want to listen to it, you'll have to buy it, or listen to it on Youtube, or something.
The sprawling drone piece which is the first track, "Hung Bunny," sets the tone for the whole album. It begins with slow, drawn out, distorted guitar chords which draw you in, crush you, and challenge you to deeply explore the sounds of the guitar. Eventually some slow beating drums and symbols are added which give the song some further depth and tension. Moaning vocals in the background, along with these drums, give the song an almost tribal or spiritual feel. "Hung Bunny", and really this entire album is extremely influential in the drone doom community. A Major band in that community, Sun O))), even credited it as in influence. You can even hear how the sound of this song is reflected in a lot of Sun O)))'s music.
Eventually, "Hung Bunny" slowly transitions into the next song on the album, "Roman Dog Bird". The music changes from the drone sound of the previous song to one of thickest, sludgiest melodies I've ever heard in any song. Slow, extremely heavy, guitars rumble back and forth, giving a feeling like you are in a thick syrup of sound. Extremely echoey, almost haunting vocals come in which complement the slow guitars perfectly.
With the end of "Roman Dog Bird", we enter the song covers portion of this album. For most bands, I would say it's a bad idea to put a cover on your album as a non bonus track, let alone three of them, however, the Melvins have this amazing ability to take good classic rock songs and transform them into sludgy masterpieces, sometimes even better than the original! "Sacrifice," a cover of the song by Flipper, is an extremely sludgy song, and flows seamlessly with the previous song. Admittedly, I've never actually listened to the original version of this song by Flipper, but this version is great. The song is full of slow, ominous guitar riffs, and the vocals are more shouted than sang. Demonic guitars growl for the chorus halfway through as King Buzzo, shouts "THEY DEMAND A SACRIFICE".
I'm going to pass over the next track, because it's more of a transition than anything else, but the song after that, "Ballad of Dwight Fry", is an amazing cover of one of my favorite Alice Cooper songs. This is the somewhat bluesy hard rock song I was alluding to earlier. Everything about this song is great, it has a banging, catchy melody, and a great, memorable chorus. "I make friends with a lot of people in the danger zone. SEE MY LONELY LIFE UNFOLD, I SEE IT EVERY DAY! SEE MY LONELY MIND EXPLODE SINCE I'VE GONE AWAY!" Man, I love that. The song tells a story about the actor Dwight Frye (the "e" was purposely dropped in the song title) who was famous for playing insane characters. In this song, he is portrayed as having the personality of the characters he played, despite being sane in real life.
The final song on the album, "With Teeth" isn't a cover song, but instead another original song by the Melvins. Although this is obviously the weakest, non transition, song on the album, it is short and still pretty good. It is sludgy, like the rest of the album, and has an almost melancholy feel to it, and acts as a great closer to this amazing album.
The thing about the Melvins is they are a very unusual and noisy band, and this makes them very hard to get into as a first time listener. However, the more you listen to them, the more you realize how great their music is. It even took me a while to fully appreciate them, but now they are one of my favorite bands. Lysol holds a special place for me because it was the album that finally made me realize the genius of the Melvins.
Track List:
1.) Hung Bunny
2.) Roman Dog Bird
3.) Sacrifice (Flipper Cover)
4.) Second Coming (Alice Cooper Cover)
5.) Ballad of Dwight Fry (Alice Cooper Cover)
6.) With Teeth
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