Melvins
Prick

Kim Thayil: "Is Prick comparable to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music?" Buzz Osborne: "It’s not that serious; it’s far stupider. It was the perfect record to put out between two major label releases. Atlantic Records freaked out before they heard the record (...) Prick sold about 10,000 copies or something. I would have been happy if it had sold two. Ten thousand? My heart almost stopped"

Handling serious topics foolishly is something many excel at; speaking seriously about complete nonsense, however, is much more difficult. I hope I succeeded. Prick, an album by the Melvins released in 1994, is, according to its creators, a total mess. Dale Crover and King Buzzo, at the time accompanied by Mark Deutrom on bass, have always been champions at doing whatever they wanted and producing material that bordered on mockery: in this album, the tendency reaches its peak. We are in the grunge years, where, following the success of Nirvana, major labels were signing any band in the state of Washington; the Melvins had just signed with Atlantic Records, who released their most commercially successful album Houdini in 1993. Atlantic had forbidden Buzzo and friends from producing material under other labels, so Prick was produced for the historic Amphetamine Reptile under the name Snivlem. Why they did it is unknown, but the inexplicable sales of the record helped finance the production of their next album, Stoner Witch. Prick, “dick” in English, was originally supposed to be called Kurt Kobain, but the sudden suicide of Nirvana's singer, personally friend of Buzz and Crover since school days, convinced the two to abandon the idea. The two made sure to remind us that the “dick” in question is indeed Kurt Cobain, whose death forced them to change the album's title. Incredible that such a senseless album can bring such moving stories, right?

The blatant uselessness of Prick immediately makes it clear how futile it is to attempt to describe the album's content; however, if we really want to try, we will find some marginally interesting elements that could allow us to discuss it more deeply. In the forty-two minutes of the album, we find Rickets, a minute and twenty of confused, dirty, and suffocating rock that's hard to describe; Pick It n' Flick It, a crude one-hundred-second guitar solo so strange to hear on a Melvins record; the instrumental Larry, the only real track on the album, in pure Houdini style. Probably the most interesting point of the album, if it weren't for the presence of Pure Digital Silence, wherein a raspy voice with a fake British accent, “for your listening pleasure,” introduces us to a minute of pure and absolute silence. For the rest, there’s the indecipherable Chalk People, the nonsensical jam of Chief Ten Beers, the drum with overdubbed bell sounds and people murmuring about Punch the Lion. All of this surrounds the ultimate folly of How About, a useless collage of chirping birds and people talking, the uninterested field recordings of Underground and Montreal, and the final mishmash Roll Another One, fourteen minutes of nonsensical sound collage.

Prick is essentially an album without a reason to be listened to; indeed, it’s hard to even find a real reason for its existence. However, if you have forty-five minutes to spare and a peculiar sense of humor, like the Melvins or your trusty reviewer here, Prick will allow you to waste those minutes in great style. After all, it is always better to listen to a senseless album made without cause than a bad album produced with great pretensions. Melvins’ completists and sound masochists, step forward.