MELVINS: BULLHEAD
ALBUM REVIEW: Melvins' groundbreaking third album gets a two-handed wedgey.
MELVINS
Boner Records
1991
For a month or two in 1990, I was walking all the way across the city, to visit my then girlfriend, two or three times a week. It took an hour or so, and my accompaniment was my Walkman - for which I only remember having one tape to play, though there must have been more. That single soundtrack had Nirvana’s Bleach on one side and Melvins’ Ozma on the other.
If that tape had been a gerbil, it would have run its tiny legs into stumps on its ever spinning wheel.
I mention this to illustrate both the fragility and the permanence of relationships. Here I sit, nearly 35 years later, having married that girl, divorced a few short years later and now having no idea whatsoever of what became of her. We lost touch last century, and any attempt to locate her and catch-up has been fruitless. She remains as much an enigma in her absence as she was in our marriage.
Melvins, on the other hand, have been a cornerstone of my life ever since. I think I’ve seen them perform live more than any other band (except maybe The Damned) and last night - on what must have been more-or-less the anniversary of one of those cross-city rambles - I saw Buzzo play acoustically with Trevor Dunn, on a tiny stage, in an intimate venue, three feet away from me.
The songs were powerful enough acoustically for me to unconsciously be pulling my Melvins face throughout. I caught myself. It’s always Boris where I notice I’m doing it. My hands are in my pockets, I’m leaning back, and my expression holds a grimace somewhere between pleasure and pain. The same expression I might have if I was standing in a wind tunnel, dialled up to max, catching sight of Buzzo in a liquorice thong, down by the turbine.
I was pulling that face the first time I ever saw them - at Reading Festival in 1992 - and I’ve involuntarily pulled the same face every time I’ve seen them since.
I hope I’ll pull it again, many more times yet.
Unlike with The Girl, my relationship with Melvins has weathered every storm - through disappointments, glories and a well-lived life. Their’s is the biggest section of The Vault. I have a hideous addiction. Tom Hazelmyer has a lot to answer for.
In 1991, the band released Bullhead. The quintessential early Melvins record - and still, for my money, their masterpiece. It was here that they really established the fundamentals of their sound; sprawling, glacially-paced chugathons. Dale’s drums beating their own spacious riffs behind Buzz’s indignant wail and, at this point of time, with thumping low end support from Lori Black AKA Lorax AKA daughter of Shirley Temple.
How consummately Melvins.
From the album artwork to the songwriting to the band’s own visage, Bullhead epitomises, for me at least, the most fundamental facet of Melvins’ existence; freedom to do as they will, absolutely, completely and 100% entirely, without apology.
There are only eight songs on Bullhead. Its concise nature works so well with the introduction of the new more progressive format of the songs. Even the shorter ones feel longer than they are, due to their pace. Not that the songs are that long - too much is being made of that. They’re only lengthy in comparison to the sub-two minute brevity of previous compositions.
Nevertheless, the album kicks off with the eight minute Boris. It’s a song that has become iconic in Melvins’ catalogue. The magnificent thunk of Buzz’s chugs comes like a tight fist of thunder. Those single dampened power chords, underpinned by Lori and Dale’s dense thud. Minimalist. Huge. Bowel drenching.
Most readers will know that the song inspired the name of the Japanese über-sludge gods Boris, who, as an aside, I urge you to check out too, at your earliest convenience. Amplifier Worship, Pink or Heavy Rocks 2002 are good places to start. That fact that they stole the song title for their band name alone is enough to extol the virtues of the opening track.
We go from thunderous chugs to a lone Buzzo, with a subtly over-driven guitar for the second verse to close, which automatically feels bold over such a monstrously heavy first half.
The awesome might of Anaconda follows. It’s the shortest song on the album and has the quickest chugging, barring Zodiac. It’s over before it’s begun, and should have been a single.
“Like it soar a lore a lie
What tells a mine to mine
Ruff sewed in mullnin' sa heartbreaka
'Cause she could lonely sell".”
Make of that what you will.
Ligature begins with thunder that rivals Boris with those single tom-pounds that unify with a dead thunk from Lori and Buzz so beautifully.
The most exhilarating element of the song comes from the wringing of Buzz’s strings to get a real pained bend out of his guitar. The entirely dry sounding floor-toms on Dale’s kit are awe inspiring - especially when the song drops out to he alone - and its creativity and pioneering presence shouldn’t be underrated.
There was nothing else even remotely doing this before Bullhead.
Sabbath included.
One of the more bizarre moments on the album comes next; the straight 4/4 rock of It’s Shoved feels like a veil has been lifted from the grim grunt of the album so far.
On any other rock album, by any other band, It’s Shoved would sound like par for the course, but here, because of what we’ve been presented with so far, its conventionality is shocking.
It’s a really short one and belies the bands love for Kiss in its 70s rock riffing.
A corker.
But not so corking as the comparably speedy metal of Zodiac. What a signature riff. The chug and hang of a single note charmingly echoes School in a way that references the relationship the band shared with Nirvana early on in both their careers.
By now though, Melvins had departed to San Francisco, leaving their Aberdeenian friends behind.
If I Had An Exorcism begins with Buzz’s solo vocals that reinforce his aesthetic as Oscar the Grouch.
The rest of the band soon slam in and drop out again after just a few bars for Buzz to pedal drone a single note, with a slow ramping tom climb from Dale, eventually pushing the pedal forward. The melody coming from Lori’s walking bass and after a while, the returning distorted and indiscernible vocals.
And we’re out.
The classic sound of a Melvins solo tom riff introduces the slide of the guitars for Your Blessened (sic), which demonstrates the archetypal composition and riffery of the band almost as well as Boris does.
If there’s such a thing as archetypal Melvins.
Which I don’t suppose there is.
Your Blessened is sparse. Most of the prophetic lyrics are reserved for the end of the song, yelled out against an enormous wrung riff:
“When man's only distant relative
Has descended on his own…
You will know!”
Album closer Cow is, by some stretch, the most noisy and progressive track on the LP. Initial elements feel free-form, and it has The Greatest Drum Solo In Rock as its centre-piece. Dale smacks the shit out of his kit for the entire second half of the song, with no accompaniment at all. He just bangs away - coherently, compulsively and compellingly all the way to the song’s end.
This is an early sign, to me, of Buzz’s love of the avant-garde and free jazz - and although it may have been done in those fields before, it sure as fuck had never been incorporated to this glorious extent in punk, grunge or post-hardcore / whatever, up to this point.
The scale of the band’s ambition and their fearlessness is all summed up with Cow.
Wow.
33 years after it was released, Bullhead still sounds huge, brave, immense and unique.
For all the sludge it has inspired since, nothing comes within a country mile of its enormity and profundity. Everyone else has just been following them.
It’s testament to the songs that they can retain their power after all this time - even, as last night proves, acoustically, when the surge of electricity and the might of excessive amplification is so rudimentary to their original compositional intent.
I own a couple of versions of the album. My original 1991 copy on Boner, proudly bought at Warp Records in Sheffield, UK, probably with The Girl waiting impatiently outside the shop for me. I also bought the 2015 reissue for no good reason other than completionism.
Lastly, I scooped up one of the limited alternative screen-printed covers and vinyl colours that Revolver magazine was selling last year.
It’s safe to say that I’m a fanboy.
So sue me.
The one I always play is the original copy. Something about it resonates more meatily through the speakers. I’m sure I read somewhere that the production was considered to be muddy. I don’t get that at all. It’s clear and spacious with abysmal depth. It’s one of my favourite recordings of all time, and Boris is the track I use as a reference for speakers and amp comparisons.
That turns some heads in Hi-Fi shops who are, surprisingly, still, in 2024, more used to demonstrating sound quality with Dire fucking Straits.
That says something about the mentality of Hi-Fi nerds, I guess, but far be it for me to cast aspersions.
Whatever; Bullhead is the sound of Galactus clapping his hands and crushing us to dust. If our world was to be devoured by such a celestial appetite, I’d want to go out to the soundtrack of Bullhead.
Wouldn’t you?
Here’s to the end of days.
Excelsior, Dorkheads!
I enjoyed this read. Bullhead is one of my favourite albums.
I couldn't keep up with them over the long haul, but I've always respected their absolute rigidity to their rules—and defiance to anyone's expectations.
In a bathroom at a house I once lived in, there was a cassette player—there was always music on in that house—and someone popped Bullhead into it. I must have gotten ready to that album every morning for 3 or 4 months. No one wanted to change the soundtrack. Still my favourite Melvins album. The last time I saw them was in 2016, I think—invited by a former woman I thought I'd marry and now have long lost contact with. Went just because she wanted, left telling everyone, "Holy shit, they're still so good".
I've got a few shots I took of them in Austin, around 2006 or so, but this one is my favourite; something about the tear in the negative and Buzzo's hair, sums them up for me.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beawesome/315402615/