Review Summary: Melvins get better by the years with a hard rockin album
At this point in time, the Melvins had teamed up with doom metal band Big Business. They created the album, A Senile Animal, and it was fairly well recieved with critics. They wrote here what could be called a follow-up album. Melvins at this point consisted of:
Buzz Osborne-guitar/vocals
Dale Crover-drums
Jarred Warren-bass/vocals
Coady Willis-drums
The music on Nude With Boots is a bit of a change for the Melvins. They were showing incresed hard rock influences and it really shows in the music. Songs like
Nude With Boots and
Stupid Creep indicate these new influences. "Nude With Boots" has a hard rock guitar riff you could here come out of, maybe, Thin Lizzy. The guitar playing has gotten better and the songs are based more around good riffs than jamming out on the instruments as in past efforts. Of course, there is still some jamming on Nude With Boots.
Dog Island is a sludgy, slow and heavy 7-minute jam with enough guitar and drum work to keep you interested. Overall the songwriting has gotten better since past releases
The fact that this album has two drummers really shows. They create riotious, complex drum rhythms that can leave you scratching your head. The drums fills are incredible too. They're nice, thick and fast and really fit in with the music. Dale and Coady counterbalance each other with one drummer playing the higher-sounding drums and another playing the lower-sounding drums. The bass playing isn't completely audible here but when you can hear it it has a nice, distorted, liquidy tone and it fills in with the rest of the music. If the bass were more audible than it would have only improved the record. The vocals are interesting to say enough. sometimes they sound like nice, clear, throaty metal vocals and sometimes they sound like complete gibberish. It's fun but it takes some getting used to.
The album suffers from very minor problems. The ambient tracks on the album don't really need to be put on here. They're not interesting enough and they showcase themselves as filler and don't really service anything on the album. The vocals, as mentioned earlier, are pretty offputting at times when those sections of the songs could be instrumentals. Overall the album is of excellent quality and suffers from very minor flaws. It is recommended to anyone with an interest in the Melvins or of sludge metal in general. A very good album for anyones collection.
