Band:	Melvins
Album:	Houdini
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	September 1993
A review by:	RaduP

01. Hooch
02. Night Goat
03. Lizzy
04. Going Blind [Kiss cover]
05. Honey Bucket
06. Hag Me
07. Set Me Straight
08. Sky Pup Detective
09. Joan Of Arc
10. Teet
11. Copache
12. Pearl Bomb
13. Spread Eagle Beagle

In metal circles, Melvins are most often remembered for being pioneers of sludge and drone metal, but outside of our circle they're mostly lumped together with the Seattle sound commonly known as grunge, and for their connection to Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Houdini lies at the Venn diagram intersection of these two circles, being the most commercially successful of the band's albums, but also their most celebrated. Let's dive in a bit.

I don't want to dive in too deep into Melvins' history, partly because this album came ten years after the band's formation so a lot of that early stuff might not be that relevant for this review, and also because this will probably not be the last Melvins review, historic or otherwise, so I'd rather not repeat the same story again and again. But also, in some ways, this is Melvins at their most accessible at that point in their career, and most likely this will be the first Melvins album that a lot of people will encounter. Their origins as a hardcore punk band often get glossed over, and their debut album essentially being a murky sludge album is always a bit of a shock when remembering that it came out in 1987. Experiments with even slower tempos ran concurrent to similar developments by Earth to pioneer drone metal as well. Bands like Boris and Eye Flys take their name directly from Melvins songs of that era.

And yet thinking about them as a "grunge" band always feels a bit wrong. Maybe because grunge made it colossally big in the 90s and it pretty much changed popular culture. Of course that means that its popularity and influence does leave a mark on how I remember and interpret the term. I don't wanna have to remember the existence of post-grunge when I write about Melvins, because it's clear that all those bands didn't have Melvins as an influence. It's somewhat of a crime that Ten and Nevermind and Dirt and Superunknown, all exceptional albums in their own right, ended up being the be all end all of grunge and a lot of people's only frame of reference, when there's gnarier and punkier bits like Rehab Doll or Superfuzz Bigmuff or even stuff by the aforementioned bands, like Bleach and Ultramega OK, most of them coming out before the sound made it huge. With that context, it makes more sense for Houdini to sit alongside something like Bleach.

But Houdini is an album made during grunge's period of highest popularity, made by a band that preceded/pioneered the sound, and that is kinda what makes it so special. I can't imagine Lysol's drone experiments or Gluey Porch Treatments' leftover hardcore punk leanings being something with much of an ounce of accessibility. Houdini, despite it's happy go lucky cover art, is not really an accessible album. It's still nasty and loud and distorted and sarcastic and surreal, but also came out in a context where the "Oh well, whatever, nevermind" angst had became the zeitgeist that made the core of its sound feel less alien to what one might expect from a rock album in that period of the 90s. And, at the same time, it was Melvins' most alternative rock coded album thus far. To drive the grunge connection home, Kurt Cobain produced this record, and also performs some guitar and percussion on some tracks. It's not like that automatically makes a band's release their most accessible, barely anybody seems to care about Extra - Capsular Extraction despite Cobain's presence there. But the production especially does make it have more sense why this reminds me of Bleach more than any other Melvins album.

At this point Melvins' lineup concentrated around vocalist/guitarist King Buzzo and drummer Dale Crover, with the band having already went through a couple of bass players. In that regard, Houdini also stands out, being the first Melvins album to have more than one credited bassist. On one hand Lorax Black is credited, but she barely performed on the album. Billy Anderson plays on a couple of tracks. Joe Preston appears on the single version of "Night Goat" that was released one year prior. Other than that, Buzz and Crover performed bass on most tracks. Despite that, bass has a pretty huge presence on the album and it doesn't feel disjointed in a way that would reflect the unclear crediting of the performance. Hell, my absolute favorite Melvins moment is how the bass begins in "Night Goat", and don't get me started on "Teet"'s bassline, so the bass absolutely plays a crucial role here.

There's a neat tie-in about Melvins covering KISS on this album, considering that one year prior, the band parodied/tributed them by also releasing one album named after each member (though it was EPs for Melvins). That seemed like a pretty interesting way to also divide the Melvins sound, with King Buzzo being more sludgy, Dale Crover more grungy and stoner-y, and Joe Preston more drone-y. With Preston's departure it makes sense why the drone aspect also is mostly absent from Houdini, save for the "it's over, go home" vibe of the easily skippable closing track. That said "Goin' Blind" goes harder than any KISS cover has the right to.

Seeing Houdini as a blend of the grungy sounds of Dale Crover and the sludgy sounds of King Buzzo with Cobain's production is somewhat appropriate. The loud distorted noisy vibe is more structured into something resembling an alternative rock album, less experimental interludes, less long droney tracks, less short hardcore punk songs. You have the aforementioned "Night Goat", one of the best metal songs of all time. You have "Lizzy" being the most conventionally grungy of all tracks. You have "Set Me Straight", a song that goes as far back as 1983, subsequently released on Mangled Demos From 1983, with some leftover hardcore punk being filtered into something more grungy. You have "Hag Me" as the long form doomy song that doesn't overdo it. It's easy to see why this, as the most "normal" of Melvins albums, ended up being the one that survived as the conventional entry point.

This has been yours truely's 850th review.