Melvins
Houdini

After the fall of '91, a date that needs no introduction, prominent producers and prestigious labels began seeking out all the bands in the Seattle area, more precisely around Aberdeen; to name a few: Tad, Mudhoney. Unfortunately, this obsessive search not often delivered thrilling results to grunge: bands used to celebrating their awkwardness felt quite uncomfortable when they had to play in perfectly equipped specialized studios. Many bands, therefore, tragically sacrificed their raw and fierce compositions into pop sentimentalities. The results were: flops, commercial failures, dismissals, break-ups of the formations, and consequently, very often, even more obscene and squalid projects; and other catastrophic consequences. In '93, Buzz Osborne's band reached Atlantic: yet another band that had been working for smaller record labels until then. That band was the Melvins, and that producer, "actually, only of six songs," was Kurt Cobain, and Houdini, did not insist on imitating what almost all the other grunge bands that were now working for majors were doing, but veered towards alternative horizons, without ever betraying their dirty and rocky sound, "although it must be recognized that this is really one of the most accessible chapters of their discography."

It is impossible to label Houdini, just like every other album of theirs, because it is a music that only they know how to play, a noise that only they know how to produce. In short, a chameleon-like album; more specifically, divided by the two fronts that have always characterized the music of the Melvins: their more atrocious side, where a distorted, dark, heavy, and minimalist heavy reigns, cunningly playing at the borders of doom; and their more philosophical and experimental side, "much more accentuated from this album onwards." Once again, we are faced with something accomplished, successful, bizarre, a dirty, yet refined album. And then, the cherry on the cake: Cobain, a good friend of Osborne and Crover, produces and plays guitar on Sky Pup, and together with Dale, performs a ten-minute percussion-based solo.

A slow drumming, and then a distorted, slow guitar, "in perfect Melvins style," a choked voice, and a corrosive chorus: this is Hooch, a new classic of the group, as well as one of the singles that most harkens back to their earliest works. No less important is Night Goat, which, starting with a rather unsettling bass line, flows into an even more martial chorus, garnished with Osborne's sinister wails. Lizzy is, instead, a carefree punk rock track, slow and incisive. Honey Bucket, "a crushing track," demonstrates the group's skill in sustaining even unthinkable speeds, while in Hag Me, we return to the funereal slow motion of the beginnings, with a guitar so distorted it sounds like farting. With Set Me Straight, the experimental games begin: a mix of punk, pop, and psychedelia aimed at connecting the Beatles with Nirvana. In Sky Pup, Pearl Bomb "with many industrial influences," and Teet, Black's skill, which had previously been eclipsed and hidden multiple times, is highlighted. In the ten minutes of percussion in Spread Eagle Beagle, the group closes, "if not a masterpiece," an honest, simple, and well-made album.

Brilliant in its genre, "whatever it may be".