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A lot of love has been put into Everybody Loves Sausages, something of a genuine new studio album from The Melvins despite being a cover album. To mark their thirtieth (!) year of existence, the band have gone back and picked out a list of their influences to cover, from Venom to David Bowie via Throbbing Gristle and Roxy Music, and the care and attention makes for a truly fun listen – not to mention the truckload of guests. In marked contrast to last week’s Anthems EP from Anthrax, the band have put their own spin on a lot of the songs, making this much more musically interesting, too. Kicking off with Venom’s Warhead, a slow, dark attack that keeps the original’s rawness but adds a sludgy gloop to proceedings and brings along Neurosis’ Scott Kelly as guest guitarist and vocalist, the track is the band at their deepest and grimmest. And of course, the band follows it with a stripped-down version of Queen’s You’re My Best Friend (guest vocalist Caleb Benjamin doing a wonderful Mercury impression) that sounds absolutely nothing like The Melvins… As fans of the band will be used to, they take seeming delight in wrongfooting you, but there’s a lot of depth to it; the cover of The Scientists’ Set it on Fire is sung by Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, and it’s a rumbling delight. David Bowie’s krautrocking Station to Station is subtly sinister in The Melvins’ hands, featuring vocals by early industrial pioneer J.G. Thirlwell that are clearly different from the Thin White Duke but that do the job perfectly. The Kinks’ Attitude is pumped-up and rocking here, while Jello Biafra does a Brian Ferry impression on In Every Dream Home a Heartache, which is eleven minutes long here and oddly creepy. It’s not a perfect album – how many more times do we have to hear bands covering Black Betty? Not that The Melvins do a bad job, far from it (Jared Warren and Coady Willis from Big Business pop up to add extra bass and drums, as they do on three other tracks) but it’s hardly something that we haven’t heard before, unlike much of the album. Still, just one dud on a covers album makes for a pretty excellent covers album, and fans of The Melvins will love this. |
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Killing Songs : Warhead, Best Friend, Set it on Fire, Station to Station, Attitude, In Every Dream Home a Heartache |
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