The latest to wash ashore in this recent flood of Melvins-related vinyl reissues, the band's trio of "solo albums" that came out on Boner Records back in '92 have all been resurrected on wax for the first
time in twenty years, featuring the original music and accompanied by a poster and digital download code. Here's our old review for this stuff from when we originally got 'em in stock:
If you've been following the Melvin's for awhile, you know that those dudes love KISS. They love 'em so much that back in 1992, the Melvins issued a series of three EP's, one from each member (King
Buzzo, Dale Crover, and then-bassist Joe Preston) presenting their own EP of original solo material; the discs were totally modeled after the original KISS solo albums from 1978 in both look and concept, mimicking the same cover art
style and KISS-logo lettering, making this part homage, part prank. These are now pretty hard to find, but are absolutely crucial to Melvins fans as each of the EP's are like a slide-section of the member's creativity, and all are
totally crushing and weird in their own manner.
King Buzzo's 12 minute disc is the closest of the three to what the Melvins were doing at the time; The opener "Isabella" appears with a heavy, repeated tom-heavy drumbeat and softly buzzing feedback drone, as a crumbling ultra-distorted guitar and Buzz's veiled vocals enter. "Porg" marries a percussive Industrial loop of heavy machine clang to droning distorted guitar noise and layers of demonically possessed moans. "Annum" appropriates part of the key riff from "White Rabbit" and crafts a tense, understated pop song. The final track "Skeeter" is like a sludge-metal comedy bit, with some guy narrating a tour story over a rolling crushing guitar/heavy drums metalpunk dirge. Who's the guy? It's actually Dave Grohl from Nirvana and Foo Fighters, who also played drums on this disc, going under the name "Dale Nixon" due to legal issues with Nirvana's label, Geffen.