Lightly Disappointing. the Melvins, Freak Puke.

For the Melvins to return from the ether of monumental under-sofa dust-hued hair and hair-raising experimentalism with not only a new LP in Freak Puke but beyond that a reconfigured moniker of Melvins LITE ought to be greeted with a dollop of intrigue equal parts elation and apprehension. As sludge metal stalwarts; no, stirps to conjoin the suffix LITE onto the brand of the band initially feels all but entirely paradoxical. Like Mew SAVAGE or Metronomy UNPREDICTABLE it's an inherent oxymoron, or it at least ought to be...

As indulge in, say, Inner Ear Rupture and initial apprehensions are to a substantial degree, well, substantiated: it's about the most tame recording the Montesanto trio have put out in their both protracted and prolific history as agitated strings seesaw as though penned for some horrible B-Movie Horror. Mr. Rip Off meanwhile is arguably more indebted to goddamn Led Zeppelin than it is to the aural infernal damnation evoked by Sleep's Dopesmoker or other such sludge seminalia. These are in no way bad tracks; they're just unspeakably bemusing to begin with. Yet attune yourself to change and you may bask in some devastating riffage. Whether all this be indebted to the inclusion of Fantomas man Trevor Dunn on superbly manipulated standup bass remains foreseeably inconclusive and maybe unlikely, although the grubby prints of Roger "King Buzzo" Osborne are indubitably smeared all over the likes of Baby, Won't You Weird Me Out and Worm Farm Waltz as a cruddy distortion envelopes the overriding trudge and chug; the pinched harmonics and pulverising assaults emanating from his aluminium instrument

The leaden pummel of Holy Barbarians is a little more familiar although as such somehow sounds somewhat dated as does a cover of Wings' Let Me Roll It that, glammed up and ultimately gunky, is more sequined than sludge-encrusted. It's expansive denouement Tommy Goes Beserk however that intimates toward a great progression and, beefier than Buzz himself, personifies the fourth horseman of this conclusion's doom-laden apocalyptica. A little more LITE certainly and arguably lightly disappointing, Freak Puke nonetheless undoubtedly evinces Osborne's strived for retention of relevance. That's now evidently best not lightened up though...