I laughed alone at the cover and insert, which is almost an inside joke of it's own. Opening it shows an anternating picture of a rubber ducky and an old analog tv. The other side has six identical pictures of a fruit. The line-up is listed as such...
- King Buzzo
- Dale Crover
- Korny a** Joker (AKA Kevin Rutmanis, AKA Kevin a**, AKA Rotten a**)
- Adam Jones (From Tool)
Did I forget to mention this is a live album? News flash, it is!! And while the first seconds simply have Buzz stating "Thanks for coming" and sounding stuffy & muddled, what the rabid fans and curious giggers DIDN'T expect is the live set consisting of the following:
- 50 straight minutes of noise, broken tuning, bizarre samples, and ear-shrieking racket.
- Which leads into one and ONLY one tune for the entire hour set, the nosiy and painfully slow EYE FLYS.
It lulls in with a depressingly retentious guitar line and all kinds of weirdness looping on. This stuff has no melody whatsoever, made in an entirety to ******** with people and piss them off. At that point samples od porn and movies are looping at times, there's an occasional crack of the drum, moments where the noise really gets unbearable at full volume. If you can endure and listen very carefully at the 35 minute mark you can vaguely hear the crowd. All two of them going woo, but the rest? Save that for later on in the review.
After what seems like the most tortured marathon ever long enough to turn rocks into diamonds, (50 minutes of this easily feels like a million years, it's no wonder noise artists have such a harshly limited fanbase.) that infamous bass note to start off a fairly notable song cuts in....and it POUNDS out of the masses of pain, like the past 50 minutes were an intro or even a tease. The performance of Eye Flys is ********' bashing though, and abruptly cuts of after it's one verse when everything kinda ekes down to a slower atmosphere.
That leads into a second track, which is literally four seconds of silence. Mainly there to rewind to Eye Flys should you not want to sit through 50 minutes of pain to hear it. At least the Melvins have courtesy.
I heard this knowing what I was getting into and I was still saying "Wow, what the ******** IS this!?!?". Casual listeners won't last five minutes, and judging by the infamous rumor, neither did the crowd. You wouldn't guess it by the recording of this, but at the actual live set, the noise was supposedly so earth-shattering it left the entire crowd inthe fetal position holding their ears. This album was supposed to be the last part of their Trilogy series before they opted on the Crybaby. It's a shame they didn't put this to DVD nor is there live footage!
A live set. Where everyone is in the fetal position because it's so ******** loud. That screams for immediate documentation.
Overall, it's a love-or-hate affair. No middle opinions. Some melvins fans hate it, some love it, Buzz says it's his favorite release next to HAT & Eggnog. For me, I get a kick of pulling it out occassionally and listening to it. It's good that way. For the viewer, you have to buy it knowing you're getting into it. It's like Exlax. You don't buy it and take it and NOT expect to dry-heave through your a*****e afterwards.
5/7, ******** make it a 6/7 because they picked Eye Flys.
Here's mainly what I look forward to:
the new Heaven and HEll album...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_You_Know_(Heaven_and_Hell_album)
And this...
