Melvins: Hostile Ambient Takeover : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Inexplicably, the Melvins have been allowed to survive for eighteen years. A band like this -- grunge taken to its logical extreme, brutal electric-guitar noise mixed with deep-diaphragm yelling -- almost made sense among the Mudhoneys and Nirvanas, who defined rock seven years ago. Today, probably to this Seattle trio's delight, the Melvins no longer have any pop-culture relevance whatsoever. So it's surprising, on this album, to find them not completely incomprehensible. "Little Judas Chongo" is actually melodic, filled with King Buzzo's satisfying garage-band guitar and a burst of freak-out noise so short it's almost cute; "The Brain Center at Whipples" passes for modern acid-metal, stretching into dark Black Sabbath jams. But don't worry! The atonal feedback ("Dr. Geek") and stretches of NUNH-NUNH, NUNH-NUNH (end of "Foaming," beginning of "The Anti-Vermin Seed") are unlistenable enough to alienate even the heartiest Dave Matthews Band fan.

STEVE KNOPPER
(April 16, 2002)