New Double Album: A Walk With Love and Death

Started by blewis, April 06, 2017, 11:22:07 AM

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(the) Razor

What does everyone think of the vocals on "What's wrong with you"?
Don't click this

AxelFoley

That's Steven on What's Wrong With You, right? Have to say the song grew on me, sounds pretty much like a combination of Melvins and Red Kross. I guess that's what they were going for with this song, so it's a success.

I'm now done with the first half of the "Love" side. Whew, it's fucking awesome! At least for longtime Melvins listeners. It's a stark contrast to the first side of the album and shows the Melvins from their more experimental side. It's basically a Prick Two (maybe even better than Prick, even though it doesn't have a Larry), and while this might not be everyone's cup of tea, I enjoy it a lot. It shows the more abrasive / free-spirited side of the Melvins again that didn't come out that much on their last few albums.

blacksanta

Love sounds nothing like prick or cod. Sounds like really cool incidental soundtrack music by people who love and respect old movies...like forbidden planet etc. Not nearly as 'hard' as i thought it would be. Its lumpy gravy 2017.

Death is wonderful. Im an emotional listener, i uglycried to soberdelic stone sober on my way back to work after picking up the album on lunchbreak. Sue me. While i have enjoyed all the albums to varying degrees, i am very critical. I take every release as being the most current view of what is going on in buzz and dale's heads. I dont feel like ive swallowed any kool aid by enjoying on some level each new album. I dont and have never liked everything, but i have always felt WOW at some point on every release. How lucky i am to be a fan of this band. Even if i dont dig pieces of it ... doesnt matter. NO ONE SOUNDS LIKE THEM. And its that uniqueness that makes those WOW moments hit so hard, and makes me shed a tear when they are really good.


Tl;DR good album
Also melvins is gay cuz some of their songs are just noise, i tell you this so you all don't buy albums and find out only one two songs is good on them.

Chief Ten Beers

Quote from: blacksanta on July 08, 2017, 02:53:31 AM
Love sounds nothing like prick or cod. Its lumpy gravy 2017.

Yes. :) That's it exactly.

(the) flutter nuts

I got the shits real bad.



119

I'll come out and say it: this "double album" sucks.

If I wanted to listen to stuff like this, I would listen to Fantomas or any other basement musician.

I listened to it on Spotify. Glad I'm not wasting money on it.

meezer

And to counter that, I love the entire album and can't wait to see them playing it live in September.  :D
"Get off of our stage. If you want on this stage, get in show business." -King Buzzo
"Yeah, we don't come in the 7-11 where you work and get up on the counter." -Mark D
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Stonergrunge

Quote from: Fureon Nectarmoon on July 07, 2017, 12:18:19 PM
The Death disc unfortunately I felt kinda played it too safe (...) I noticed some melodies almost repeating the other tunes, even within the same album

I agree, listened to it last night and some of the riffs are too similar to other songs like the second part of "Suicide in Progress", "Dog Island" or "Sesame Street Meat", just to name a few. The soundtrack was not as strange as I thought it would be, I was expecting something like Throbbing Gristle or Merzbow but there are a lot of melodies in it, specially in tracks like "Give It To Me" and "Scooba".

"Queen Powder Party", "Black Heath", "Scooba" and "Flaming Creature" are my favorite ones so far.
cartoons, chocolate milk & rock 'n' roll!!
Fuzz is love.
Foot fetishism means love, because, it's the magic of feet odor... Long live depravation.

JUDY


(the) Razor

I liked it much better the second time I listened to it but I still think the "Melvin's are cruising" is a phrase that I can't get out of my head...
Don't click this

zlbenson

I'm into it. Probably won't listen to Love more than a couple times because that kind of thing isn't really my jam,  but I don't begrudge them the experimentation. Death is fantastic.  I love the psych flavoring.
twitter: zlbenson

(the) flutter nuts

I love this album. 
The Death reminds me of Melvins lite alot! I dig it.
The Love  is kick ass. Has some strangeness but has some underlying riff's and melody wafting in and out.
I got the shits real bad.



Captain CoryCory

Giving this a serious listen and main thoughts in mind:

- In terms of visual aesthetic this is one of the finest releases the band has ever put out. Both digipaks and the design are utterly phenomenal. Mackie knocked this one right out the park!

- Agree 100% with Black Santa on Soberdelic (acid only) as a standout, musically to me a mix of Dwight Fry and Suicide in Progress but lyrically it's really strong, maybe one of the strongest songs they've done. Even now when Melvins pull out some memorable songs they really become unforgettable.

- Euthanasia in re-release form is good. Wishful thinking at best but to see a proper recording of Rabbit's Revenge would be lovely one day.

- The second half from track five on up on Death is where it kinda blurs together for me though Edgar has some solid guitar work. Flaming Creature kind of resembles City Dump at times and Cardboa Negro definitely made me think Foaming but if you've got this much output you're going to hit some similar sounding tunes at one point. Every band is guilty of that, some cases far less endearing than The Melvins.

- A buddy of mine heard it and felt "Death may well be lighter than Melvins Lite". I don't disagree but I don't mind Melvins getting a bit poppier either as I can dig into poppy stuff personally. Plus it's nice to have a Melvins album without a bunch of bloopy noise tacked on at the end for the sake of length. That said...

- A friend of mine who does experimental/noise music for a long time said once to me "Good experimental goes wherever it wants but is ultimately heading on a path, building towards something while some people go avant-garde, sonically shit in a bowl and call it art.". It's an assessment that stuck with me and something I keep in mind going into "noise" records. In the case of Love it feels like a bit of both but leans towards the former on serious listen though there's some definite shit in there! Some of it really showing creativity and going into good weird places (Eat Yourself Out, Halfway to The Bakersfield Mall, Park Head) while some of it does utterly fuck all for me (Street Level St. Paul, Chicken Butt, Pacoima Nornal, Track Star, The Asshole Bastard).

- I still love Scooba to bits.

- T-burg is deceptively heavy.  I can imagine adding more "organic" instrumentals and vocals to the song based on it's structure and it being a really heavy death march kind of song, like heavier than the entire Death disc. I can see the Love disc actually growing on me quicker than the Death disc to some extent. I've heard worse experimental outings (Boris comes to mind on this thought, sadly.).

- Overall both records are pretty good but don't entirely click just yet, maybe they'll be growers with time. I'd give the overall product a 7 or 8 out of 10. I'm also glad the Melvins don't give a shit about any critics (and I can see Pitchfork and Decibel having an utter field day with this one!), do whatever they want and keep on chugging along like a train of pure heaviness.

Death tracks I like the most: Sober-delic (acid only), Euthanasia, What's Wrong With You?, Edgar The Elephant, Cardboa Negro
Love tracks I like the most: Queen Powder Party, The Hidden Joice, Eat Yourself Out, Scooba, Halfway To The Bakrsfield Mall, T-Burg

119

By all means, I know there will be fans that dig this. I don't. Not enough for me to shell out 20.00
for it.

A DOUBLE ALBUM that I went completely spoiler free on, I was thinking this was going to be one of the best albums they have ever did and we got this...

There are literally tons of this type of stuff out there from rank amateur bedroom musicians to names you may recognize.

You can't say that however about what the Melvins' "proper music" that we as fans are more accustomed to.

And I know their attitude toward constructive criticism and criticism in general. I don't care about that. I'm disappointed in it. Euthanasia is about the only track on it I like because it never had gotten a proper release like this and the song is awesome.


DToxico

Listened last night and then again this morning.

The 'Death' disc is good, but not as good as I was hoping. Not anything bad on here or anything but a lot of it kind of blurs together and, like other people have said, plays it kind of safe. Will probably like it more after a few more listens but so far the only ones on here that really grab me are "Black Health" and of course "Euthanasia".

The 'Love' disc, however, was fantastic from start to finish. I have to raise an eyebrow at the intensely negative response I keep seeing for it, because I'm pretty used to hearing Melvins fans crowing almost constantly about how much more evolved and esoteric and 'weird' their music tastes are compared to all the 'normies' and 'plebs' they know, because I think it's the most daring and interesting thing they've done in a while. Reminds me absolutely nothing of Prick because this clearly had a lot more effort and love (pun not intended) put into it. Some parts of it make me think of Throbbing Gristle or SPK or Foetus, but more than anything, a lot of it made me think of Swans' "Soundtracks For the Blind", which makes me a happy camper. Been waiting a while to hear the Melvins do something like this, I knew they had it in them.