Melvins
Gluey Porch Treatments

THE REVIEW

Inexorably slow, melodramatic, bordering on the tragicomic: this is 'Gluey Porch Treatments'.

The debut work of the most discredited trio in the state of Washington, this pouring of molten lead with persuasive and subliminal rhymes resembles little more an album and much more a shamanic occult ritual. Indeed, because if it is true that, as some believe, rock'n'roll was born to provide yet another hint of mental masturbation to the masses, the Melvins occupied with their first album a position anything but conventional to the habit that used to "alter" the emotional state of the listeners of that era.

In the midst of the phony American New Wave (neglecting the British post-phony one), the album in question resonates light years away from a reality made of psychedelic chandeliers borrowed from the concluded 70s, and establishes itself as a unique ceremony in its era capable of severing the ties with a predictable frivolous and fluffy rock'n'roll riddled with countless "made in USA" contradictions.
Only by listening to it more and more times does one realize the obsessive spontaneity and the prophetic emphasis with which the aphorisms of Buzz Osbourne, the outbursts of Dale Crover, and the instability of Matt Lukin intercede to redirect listening towards those monolithic deeds that their very charisma laments in every piece.

Initially titled "Six Songs", what was supposed to be a demo CD driven by imagination and alcohol became excessively heavy until it expanded its capacity to record a full 29 tracks well divided between studio sessions and basement sessions (I'm not kidding).
The result? Tracks like "Eye Flys", the opening track of the CD, whose approximately two and a half-minute feedback intro (on a total 6 minutes and 16 seconds) immediately shatters any possible auditory misunderstanding, explicitly declaring itself in time to introduce the subsequent "Echo-Don't Piece Me" and "Steve Istant Neuman": sounds that in just three tracks entirely restructure the rotting facade of a saccharine hard-rock undermined at its foundations.

An operation as slow as admitted before, painful to listen to for its timeless and unique ability to succeed in combining (with disarming slowness) rhythms from an esoteric executioner with pours of Big Muff extremized by valve amplifiers tortured to the limit, leading to the same finality. A faint, choked voice, at times clownish.
An album whose descriptive power proves hard to lose. An album for which no additional applications are necessary. A tank equipped with chromed tracks capable of influencing (directly or indirectly) the entire epic of the global doom scene that shortly will explode in all the most depraved clubs of the under-underground globe.

An unmissable album, a true prophecy.