Melvins
Nude With Boots

Yeah, it has always been like this: if you have a garden or a terrace, a few hundred sausages and a few liters of beer, the music to play in the background is a nice compilation of hard Led Zeppelin tracks. Ice-cold beer, well-cooked sausages, and Led Zeppelin: perfect evening, but no longer. Melvins subvert, they change. From now on, for a barbecue "Nude With Boots" is like charcoal: essential.

"The Kicking Machine" is a more syncopated "Mody Dick" sung in chorus; "Billy Fish": another melody, another riff stolen from some '70s stoner; "Dog Island" is a more Christian Democrat and less martial "Boris" with one of those riffs that make you nod your head for all seven minutes of duration (of the song... what did you think?); "Dies Iraea" is a psychological trip à la Lynch; with "Suicide in Progress" the wild pogo resumes, the drums (yes, two drums simultaneously, two drummers) separate themselves during the breaks and a grin is printed on your face; "The Smiling Cobra" is pressing the foot on the pedal of cheekiness; "Nude With Boots" churns out major, cheerful riffs, with spectacular ups and downs that are worth the discography of millions and millions of human beings: a song for a car journey with the window down; Intermission ("Flush"); "The Stupid Crew" pumps quite a bit; "The Savage Hippy" is like pissing on Botticelli's Venus, a practice common among Melvins and loved by their supporters; with "It Tastes Better Than The Truth" we return to the classic Melvins nightmare: slow and obsessive rhythms, haunted voice, and stuff like that.

In short, "Nude With Boots" is the 2008 album that continues the path started with "(A) Senile Animal," but done better. With more passion and urgency, for it is one of their most catchy and brash albums.

I can't quantify "Nude With Boots" within the history of music, nor am I interested in doing so. Maybe it’s worth nothing for music history, maybe in ten years no one will remember it, but for the history of barbecue, it’s a fundamental moment. The 22nd of October, 1929, of sausages. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the definitive soundtrack to commit a massacre.

Note: In the writing of this review, no sausages or any other part of what once was a pig were mistreated... "Pigs don't let it"