Buzz Osborne is an artist who clearly has no fear of exploring either the past or the future, and he does a bit of both on the
Melvins' 2025 effort
Thunderball.
Osborne identifies this album as the work of "Melvins 1983," meaning that the drummer on board is
Mike Dillard, who played in the band's first lineup, while usual timekeeper
Dale Crover is apparently otherwise engaged.
Dillard's presence gives
Thunderball a clear tie to the band's first era, but the other players
Osborne invited for these sessions come from a very different musical direction.
Ni Maîtres, an experimental noise artist of note, played upright bass on this material, while abstract electronic musician
Void Manes manipulates various bits of electronic gadgetry as well as contributing what he calls "experimental machine vocals."
Manes' clouds of buzzing and squealing dominate "Vomit of Clarity," while he makes his presence known on most of the other cuts without getting too far in the way of the other musicians. The opener, "King of Rome," is a potent three-and-a-half-minute dose of thunder with lots of chugging guitar, roiling drums, pulsebeat bass, and aggressive rhythms that rocks hard in a satisfying way. The abstract soundscape of "Vomit of Clarity" briefly stops the momentum and throws the pacing offtrack, but the remaining three tunes are lengthy journeys into heaviness that better reflect the traditional
Melvins stylebook. The slow, dynamic march into the unknown on "Short Hair with a Wig" gives
Manes plenty of space to punctuate the quiet moments with inorganic sounds, and the more energetic attack of "Victory of the Pyramids" indulges the
Melvins' well-documented passion for sludgy metallic riffing while running at a faster pace than is their custom, and with an impressive amount of anthemic riffage.
Osborne has been doing this sort of thing for so long, one imagines he could write and play songs like this in his sleep if he wanted to, but he understands there's a difference between having a recognizable style and lazily repeating yourself, and
Thunderball shows he still hasn't fallen into the trap of sounding rote. This isn't the
Melvins at their peak, but it is the work of a band following their muse with smarts and muscle, and the presence of
Maîtres and
Manes does allow for some new wrinkles that take these tunes down less traveled detours. After over four decades, the
Melvins still sound utterly uncompromised and full of swampy vigor, and
Thunderball confirms they haven't finished challenging themselves or their audience, not by a long shot. ~ Mark Deming
