- The Melvins... I remember them! Or is it just Melvins? Not even iTunes is sure, but who uses that anymore, right? The Melvins were that band I thought would sound like Nirvana or Chris Cornell because Jason Bateman thought they were cool in ‘Juno’. I had expected grungy punk riffage and struck something else altogether with the Melvins, namely metal. Yes, the Melvins are an '80's metal band and ‘Hold It In’ is their twentieth studio album, released just in time to make October 2014 truly horrifying. The joke works on the level that it’s almost Halloween and usually '80’s metal bands up to their twentieth studio album twentieth years after their heyday are something like zombies back from the dead with only half an arse.

In actual fact, some of the tracks from Hold It In are quite good. Some stink of the same trash that was their last album Tres Cabrones, released last year. The difference is the recording line-up. Buzz ‘King Buzzo’ Osbourne -as ever- provides his signature Melvins lead guitar flavour , with other Melvins stalwart Dale Crover on drums and stuff. Here’s where it gets interesting, the other two recording band members on Hold It In are Paul Leary and JD Pinkus, half of the complete soul which makes up The Butthole Surfers, a band The Melvins have mixed and matched with since their Pacific Northwestern weirdo-sludge metal beginnings. The Butthole Surfer boys' influence is very strong with the tracks Brass Cupcake, Barcelonian Horseshoe Pit, Eyes On You and the surprisingly poppy I Get Along (Hollow Moon). These four tracks stick out like sore thumbs on a chorus of circus freaks at a blues jamboree; the kind of spaced-out rollicking that defined classic Butthole Surfers with names that would make David Yow say ‘yowza!’. Too much? It’s no coincidence that these are also my favourite tracks, because despite great song titles like Bride of Crankenstein, Sesame Street Meat and especially Piss Pisstopherson, there wasn’t much else keeping me interested in this record.

I mean, from the very first lyric in the very first track (Bride of Crankenstein, ha-ha wasn’t that a Halo Benders song? *Bong rip* ha-ha-ha) “What was that shit you sold me/You know you should have told me”, this album would be a fantastic Buttholes Surfers album if it wasn’t for those guys from the Melvins. Hold It In is worth buying for your early '90’s Pacific Northwest band obsession, probably worth skipping the next live tour unless they’re zapped into some kind of two-headed Frankenstein’s monster made out of King Buzzo’s head and Paul Leary’s extremities.

- Matt Hall.