At this point in their storied careers, King Buzzo
and Dale Crover of the Melvins have pretty much earned the right to sit back
and rest on their laurels. And on Nude With Boots, they do exactly that.
Where 2006's (A) Senile Animal, was weird, loose, spontaneous, and flush with
the energy of two new members (Jared Warren and Coady Willis of the blistering
Big Business), Nude sounds, well, a bit naked. Lean and not mean enough, songs
like "The Kicking Machine" and "The Stupid Creep" are as conventional as anything
the band has ever recorded. Even the disc's one-minute foray into ambient
noise, "Flush," sounds as disposable as its name (which, granted, was probably
the intended punch line). But the Melvins' crudely sublime mix of earthmoving
riffs and abyssal humor doesn't quite cohere this time around; the track that
comes closest, "The Savage Hippy," succeeds by sounding initially more like
vintage Butthole Surfers than vintage Melvins. Halfway through, however, "Hippy"
mutates into the type of crud-clogged gloom-fest that Buzzo and Crover patented
long ago. Too bad it's the album's second-to-last song; even after being chased
by the fairly ripping "It Tastes Better Than The Truth," it's not enough to
render Nude With Boots anything more than a placeholding disc with a couple of decent
jams struggling to redeem it.