Tres Cabrones

[(PAUL)]

Review from Blabbermouth, they gave it an 8 out of 10:

30 years in the life and what a mondo bizarro ride it's been for the MELVINS. It's only appropriate they mark the occasion with a distorto-huffing nutjob album featuring the 1983 lineup. Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover reunite with original drummer Mike Dillard for the sometimes messy, always loud "Tres Cabrones", a splooging rawk party catered specially for MELVINS muties.

Sampling the album's gonzo liner notes scored with mangled cars and a hilarious portfolio of grinning goats, the immediate impression of "Tres Cabrones" is this played strictly for kicks. Four songs in, the out-of-nowhere hoedown hooliganism staked by the MELVINS' hike of the raunchy camp classic "Tie My Pecker to a Tree" busts up any sense of uprightness to this album. For a moment, you almost think the MINUTEMEN revived D. Boon and got back together to hit the stoner trail. From this point, it's a safe assumption "Tres Cabrones" is going to ring every bit the car wreck the packaging implies. That's largely to the good.

Crover shifts over to bass and supplements "Tres Cabrones" with extra percussion, King Buzzo wrangles every oozing squawk he can out of his frets and Mike Dillard comes to this goofball gala with his chops on full display. Osborne wrote ten new songs for "Tres Cabrones", splicing them with nerdy and gut-busting rips on "traditional American folk songs" (as cited by the liner notes) including "Tie My Pecker to a Tree", "99 Bottles of Beer" and "You're in the Army Now". The latter is especially comical with the ensemble chanting "bitch, bitch, you son of a bitch!" with humping drums and nutty static assisting the trudging hilarity.

Many songs on "Tres Cabrones" are sludge-crushed ditties such as "Doctor Mule", "City Dump", "Psychodelic Haze" and "Stump Farmer" that will ring like raucous pleasure pills to longtime fans. The old BLACK FLAG and FLIPPER fuzz-dragging ethos that first inspired the MELVINS are back at work here, only with more accouterments such as swarming synths and other assorted aural flotsam smudged into the tunes. "City Dump" is one of the meatiest songs on the album and should emerge as an immediate fan favorite.

The seventies era of KISS plays a hand in the grinding "Dogs and Cattle Prods" until the distortion is turned down minus some rear filters while Osborne lays down a ZEPPELIN-esque acoustic line that morphs and slows through quirky child's piano lines and a mucky deconstruction to its brittle finish. Afterwards, "Psychodelic Haze" hacks away with Dale Crover's punctuated bass whumps and King Buzzo's reeling guitar gasps that pull in a sliver of Ozzy Osbourne's "Believer" as part of the song's primary melody. The irony of Buzz Osborne's twisted homage is hardly lost here.

Expect more absurdity on "99 Bottles of Beer", which wraps on a looped "beer" mantra accompanied by chunky instrumentation, leading into the completely bonkers "I Told You I Was Crazy". Instigated by shrill stylaphone screeches from Osborne and a subsequent demonic doom march, there's more than a bit of honesty playing into the song's title. Osborne and Crover jerk every malevolent tone they can through a prolonged period of unhinged strings and electronics as Mike Dillard lays down a sluggish beat ushering the ear-gouging bedlam around him. The Pong-esque blipping at the end of the song marks a point of salutation to the MELVINS' first slogs out of the Atari age.

"Walter's Lips" (also a nod back to the band's formative years as seen through the omnipresence of late famed reporter Walter Cronkite) exhibits a gleeful punk ploy hijacked straight out of early English punk, i.e. THE VIBRATORS, THE ADVERTS and SHAM 69. It thumps heartily along as one the album's gnarliest jams, while "Stick 'em Up Bitch" steps on the gas a bit, staying in classic punk mode and taking "Tres Cabrones" home on a high note. Dale Crover rolls some impressive winding lines beneath Buzz Osborne's humming distortion and Mike Dillard's tapping tempo.

Stripping down the dense layers of more-recent albums such as "(A) Senile Animal", "Nude with Boots" and "Freak Puke" for this way-fun bro-down from the MELVINS' Class of '83, "Tres Cabrones" is chaos personified. However, Osborne, Crover and Dillard do kick a lot of ass while spreading their frequently shambolic audile goo. The intentionally-slipshod clapping at the end of "Doctor Mule" affirms early-on that "Tres Cabrones" takes itself as seriously as a Friday night crank pull. Nonetheless, for all of the lunatic fringe spread throughout this album, it does tighten up more often than it doesn't and it's sure to be received giddily by MELVINS aficionados.


Read more at http://www.blabbermouth.net/cdreviews/tres-cabrones/#Qb8bU8OjCfumlJLJ.99

[Fureon Nectarmoon]

    I am hoping that a certain Synthesizer ends up on tour and we get treated to "I Told You I was Crazy" and Maybe, Just Maybe...
"The Fool, The Meddling Idiot" 

I am praying any synthesizer ends up on tour. Be it that Make Noise thing or a toy piano, I just desperately want the Melvins to get a keyboard player, at least on tour. It opens up a lot of possibilities.

[Stonergrunge]

Believe it or not, I haven't listened to it yet because I'm waiting for Christmas and it's right there in my closet along with the deluxe edition of Mad Season's Above and the AmRep 25th Anniversary Bash compilation CD.

[John Schuller]

Have to admit I don't think much of it.

I think that there's a new Stone Temple Pilots album coming out soon, so you should be good.

Don't get upset and if you remember me from the STP thread you would also know I don't give a rats about post-Weiland STP.

OK, because you do give a rat's ass about any era of STP, your opinion on Tres Cabrones means about nothing.

Tres Cabrones is amazing from start to finish. Another great Melvins record in my opinion. Not sure why people think any of it is filler. Melvins have embraced covers and comedy since the beginning of their career - Love Theme from Kiss on Ozma anyone?

[anaconda]

Love Thing!! I think they played that one straight though,
not for any comic effect. And they nailed it.

[deatheats]

I finally got my mits on this album on Saturday.  Was out of town when it got released but finally made my to Green Noise records to pick it up.  Only given it one listen so far, but I'm liking what I'm hearing. I love the vocals on Doctor Mule and just the overall lighthearted vibe of the album.

Will be blasting it again on the way home from work today.

[skizm_bts]

Really wanna cop this. I've only heard American Cow. Which drives my gf nuts when I play it every night 

[acid policy]

melvins albums often have to gestate for me. for HAT, NWB, TBSM, FP, and now tres cabrones, there was some barrier that i couldn't get through initially, even though i listened to them repeatedly and enjoyed them at superficial levels, then at some point i am allowed entry and it's like i'm hearing it for the first time. anyone else get that? its odd but cool.

anyway, now that i get it or whatever, tres cabrones is another fresh reinvention of the band. great stuff. i miss dale on drums, but getting a new perspective in that position allowed for some things to happen that wouldn't have otherwise, and that's pretty cool. considering the shoes he had to fill, matt does an admirable job. hearing dale's take on bass is pretty cool, too.

[buddy holiday]

melvins albums often have to gestate for me. for HAT, NWB, TBSM, FP, and now tres cabrones, there was some barrier that i couldn't get through initially, even though i listened to them repeatedly and enjoyed them at superficial levels, then at some point i am allowed entry and it's like i'm hearing it for the first time. anyone else get that? its odd but cool.

i had that with the 3 BB full lengths. it feels so good when listening to them now. meanwhile they turned into true melvins classics.

[jules]

Believe it or not, I haven't listened to it yet because I'm waiting for Christmas

[Stonergrunge]

Yes, I know, it sounds ridiculous but it's true.

[Dumpster D]

Youre not the only one, I plan to see if theres a copy collecting dust next to BSM over in the Belleville mall, during my next Christmas shopping Excursion, I plan to treat myself this holiday, after the Year dumpsters had he needs him some Melvins 83.

[Dan_Halen]

Since im too lazy to check or re-read every page of this thread.... is the version of Physhco-delic Haze extended on the CD vs the original 10" version?

[(PAUL)]

Since im too lazy to check or re-read every page of this thread.... is the version of Physhco-delic Haze extended on the CD vs the original 10" version?

I don't think so, it is mastered better on the CD as compared to the 10" though.

[Stonergrunge]

Wait a minute, is there a difference in length between the CD and the vinyl version of "Psycho-delic Haze"?