(A) Senile Animal

[Vcavallo]

RE: the radio

i think it's going to happen one day. it will be very short lived and very strange. then it will disappear into history


NOW, about the album.
i just re-fell in love with it. hard this time.

so many people have listened to the Civilized Worm sample, but i can't believe nobody has mentioned how utterly awesome it is when the song just slowly dies mid-track.....then comes back to life right where it left off!  oh those melvins.....

[Mad Arab]

I have heard "A History of Bad Men" by way of a friend. I myself have not downloaded it. This song could be on the radio if a station was so inclined. The song is great. It would do mainstram radio justice if it ever was. Don't you wish the Melvins success? Radioplay would surely garner more album sales. I think the Melvins have already proved they would not sell out. Consider their stint with Atlantic as evidence. In fact I might contact radio stations in my locality when the album comes out and try to persuede them to play a track off of the album.

[Metalhead Cow]

The guitars riffs of Civilized Worm remember me "Queen" ( from Stoner Witch album ).
Great song ! hearding everyday !!

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

[Komar]

This last part of the song always reminds me of Queen (the band). When I first heard it i was a little confused `cause it felt abnormal. MAYBE there are some more "straight" rocking parts on this Record. Those Melvins seem to like it...(not that there was anything wrong with it)

[Komar]

[Michael Jordan]

"A History of Bad Men" sounds like a distant cousin of "Night Goat"

A distant cousin?  A fucken siamese mother fucken twin!   (sorry for my foul language, I'm under a lot of stress lately )

[jasonpc]

hey there,

long time reader first time poster... (to be read in cheesy fm talkback radio caller voice).

i have to agree with "dudbean" on the end of track civilised worm, it does have an 80's kinda sound... you know the cold, cold, cold part and it really stuck in my brain for days wondering what it reminded me of.
then it came to me after a while, they are cheap trick harmonies! FUCKING AWESOME!
I love it.
and i also really like the "wait" vocal effect, it sounds like buzz making a deliberate reference to the first line in the kiss song "makin' love".

i wouldnt call it cheezy though, i would call it genius.

oh, and i know how shit it is too download an album when you should be supporting the band, (i play in a band myself that has had albums frequenly available online before they officially come out), BUT.... its the fucking melvins and i will buy this on pretty much any and all formats they decide to release.

hopefully some special kinds of vinyl...

cheers

[el Giron]

Hey, it's QUEEN Buzzo.

[mopafeena]

(i play in a band myself that has had albums frequenly available online before they officially come out)

Would that be Bloodduster by any chance?

[crow011]

id just like to point out that none of the new people are anywhere as cool as me . . .

that is all . . .

[anaconda]

...i also really like the "wait" vocal effect, it sounds like buzz making a deliberate reference to the first line in the kiss song "makin' love". i wouldnt call it cheezy though, i would call it genius.

I actually thought the same thing, its just so obvious

[sheathforever]

i had sent this to the person who let me hear the album, but i figured since we're all just sounding off around here and i've joined the general fray i'll make like samuel beckett and be unable to stop talking:

"thanks for sending me the album. in deference to your request, just a couple of thoughts about the album:

it grows and gains articulacy upon repeated listens. the first time i listened to it, i thought that it all bled together a lot, particularly due to the preponderance of "gang" style vocals. as i say, though, nuances became disambiguated the further i delved into the record. the abundance of backing vocals could be taken in more than one light: at times they blend together so well, its hard to tell who's singing and whose vocals are up front. this can throw a listener off but i generally like the somewhat subtle counterpoints provided. surely a result of jared's and buzz's vocal similarities, this brings up what is to my mind the essential crux of this album-- its self-reflexivity.  clearly big business in specific and, generally, more or less the entirety of jared's publicized musical career (pointedly karp, the whip, and big business) is buried neck-high in melvins influence. most clear in the probably at least partially coincidental similarity of vocals, but spreading across many points of style and songwriting technique, this influence makes for an interesting case of musical self-refraction.  the big business members reinvest the melvins with their own fully developed sensibilities (which can't escape the influence of the melvins oeuvre).  thus the melvins gain an added sense of themselves from the point of view of the acolyte, so to speak, allowing  a fuller, ironic (perhaps in baudelaire's / schlegel's / de man's sense of the trope) perspective of their musical identity, in this vertiginously lucid and unidirected venture. i myself have (almost) always enjoyed the caprices of the melvins, but there are those who feel albums are often uneven because of this experimental sensibility. '(a) senile animal' eschews all of that, taking one idea, or one kind of idea, and running with it. i can't really think of an album that as solidly and effectively deploys a straightforward rock'n'roll aesthetic unbroken across its span since perhaps 'bullhead'.  yet, for the focused stare of the album, new elements of melody, harmony and almost-pop cohesion come to the fore, particularly in 'civilized worm' and 'a history of drunks'. i could've dealt with more complicated drum interplay, but this isn't to say there isn't any, or that the drums are not excellent. in fact, if only from a recording standpoint, the drum sounds have a clarity and take up more space (which is good) in a way absent since at least 'stag'. at the risk of ending abruptly, i will end (abruptly) these ramblings. thanks again for letting me hear the record."

[The Fool]

civilised worm reminds me more of lizzy than queen myself- as far as gtr goes anyway.
i know which chord remind you guys of queen though.
...all three songs mentioned are fucking great anyway! 

there's only 12 notes, so i guess after 20+ albums you're bound to do something that sounds vaguely similar to another song now and then.

[Vcavallo]

this album makes many comments on many topics.
the melvins are beginning to enter a point in their career where they have done so much, that if they don't enter into conversation with history, one might accuse them of being a bit lazy or ignorant. 
does this seem like a fair enough theory to anyone?  or maybe it's the age-old melviny reason:   they just wanted to.  it's not cheesy, it's not anything, it's just queen buzzo's Fucking WHIMS, man.

and by the way, that picture is completely hilarious

[Vcavallo]

i think this is dead-on in many ways.