MELVINS

Tarantula Heart (Ipecac)

Fair play to Melvins: 27 albums in and still finding both new ways of working and new people to work with. Joining core trio Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover and relative newbie Steven McDonald on Tarantula Heart are Ministry/Soulfly drummer Roy Mayorga and We Are The Asteroid guitarist Gary Chester, formerly of Butthole Surfers’ Texan contemporaries Ed Hall. Flipping the creative process on its head, they started by improvising in studio sessions before Osborne repurposed and reshaped the results at home.

Epic opener Pain Equals Funny makes no attempt to conceal the scars and stitches, adopting an unsettling habit of changing tack just as it’s hit a groove. The full-blown chaos of Allergic To Food makes best use of double drummers Crover and Mayorga, but it’s She’s Got Weird Arms that really surprises with its Fugazi-at-their-most-melodic segments.

But just to reassure anyone fearing that this may be one to be filed alongside the band’s more esoteric experiments, the two other tracks – Smiler and single Working The Ditch – are classic, straight-up, beefy riffmonsters that rip from the get-go.

words BEN WOOLHEAD