Customer Reviews

Bullhead

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4 star:		(1)
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The Melvins are one of the greatest examples of what modern post punk metal is and should be. It's about the "slow grind", Black Sabbath slowed down to 16RPM (Remember those old record players). Buzz Osbourne's guitar is HEAVY, dark and vicious, and free of solos, sort of like The Ramoes overdosed on Quaaludes. Dale Crover is one of the greatest rock drummers and maybe the best today in my opinion; sometimes providing the only changes (rhythmically) over droning, heavilly distorted guitar riffs. Bullhead is among their best records.

Oh my. This album is the heaviest album I have ever heard. The whole album sounds like this - imagine having your feet glued to the ground and a giant 8 ton rock is slowly crushing your body. Pretty damn heavy, right? This album makes Black Sabbath sound like The Beatles. And I LOVE Black Sabbath!

But seriously, folks. You have to get your hands on this album. And I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LISTENING TO THIS ALBUM IN A ROOM AS DARK AS YOU CAN GET IT. Turn it way up. Wayyy up. The experience might frighten you, but it is soo great. There were times during the album when I just had to shake my head in disbelief - this is TOO heavy. How can people make music like this?

Let's take Boris. Massively heavy riff repeating throughout the song. And Dale Crover's drums is basically one big fill. You actually cannot tap your foot or bang your head to this because of the magnificent Crover. Just try to, then give up, frustrated.

Other brilliant tunes include Anaconda and Ligature - just BRUTALLY heavy. It's Shoved has the same riff as Nirvana's "Milk It", except theirs has pauses in the riff, this one is just walking. This album came out 2 years before they did Milk It, so... Zodiac and Your Blessened are good. Buzz does some good tortured vocals on one of these tunes (can't remember actually, too busy drooling over the heavy guitar and bass). If I Had an Exorcism might be the tortured vocals one, actually. I THINK IT IS. That one is short, I believe. Your Blessened is good. They all are. Cow is one of the standouts - one of the best drum solos I've ever heard. However, 'Toad' and 'Moby Dick' are better (even though they both are the exact same thing - hooky pop riff, really long drum solo, hooky pop riff.) This thing is just massive pile of sludge riff and awesome drum solo. Dale Crover is not a fast, extremely technical drummer like Neil Peart (wanker). Frankly, Crover could kill him. Dale is just wailing on the drums. He's like a heavy handed brute who's been given a drum set and some sticks.

Brilliant album. If you like music that's so powerful you might get scared, buy this. Hell, if you have ears, buy this. Or download it, or get it burned from one of your friends, I don't care. ACQUIRE THIS ALBUM.

the melvins are quite possibly the heaviest band in the world. These are the guys who invented sludge rock. From start to finish this album is a definite head ripper offer. it all starts with "boris" which is a 9 minute massacre of supreme sludge. And it ends with "cow" which features a 4 minute awesome drum solo from mr. dale crover. The highlighs in between are "anaconda","it's shoved", and "zodiac". Which really make you remember a cross between the stooges and black sabbath. and if you like the melvins you will love acid king.

Bullhead gurgles like a drowning poodle dog. It arises from the sloppy depths of muck stomping harder than Godzilla. The Melvins move like a tectonic plate subduction zone sucking everything down in its path. Buzz, Dale and Lorax will crush you into undifferentiated tissue.

If someone in the heavens, most likely a highly disturbed individual, were to conduct an audio time lapse experiment with a huge crusty old glacier...The Melvins is what it would sound like. Creeping, dirty , and rumbling...like your uncle's Dodge. Except The Melvins don't smell like pork rinds on the inside. On second thought, that would be dependant upon which album you were listening to. Bullhead is a masterpeice...released in 1991, and full of northwest grit. Huge like only The Melvins can be.

this album contains "boris" and if that means nothing to you, than please for your sake, purchase bullhead. if you listen to the album more than five times and are not foaming at the mouth every time "zodiac" or "your blessend" enter yr head, than fella, you are a big, dumb moron who probably likes metallica.

Short and sweet..."Bullhead" is the best place to start when listening to the MELVINS for the first time. The song "Your Blessened" was originally released by Slap A Ham Records (Chris Dodge's art appears on the "Ozma" cover by the way) as a live track on an 8" flexi a year or so before the studio version on this album. When I first heard that flexi in 1990, I was hooked. "Bullhead" came out a year later, and that's all she wrote. I love so many of their albums, but for me "Bullhead" was my first and favorite Melvins album...and will always be the one to beat. (also, I dig the fruit still-life album cover...it looks like the tabletops at Frank & Angie's Pizzeria...)

Listen to "Boris" and "Your Blessened" and tell me the Melvins don't rock. If you do, you're obviously a fan of Linkin Park.

If you are new to the Melvins and want a solid album from start to finish, this is it. No filler, no experimental BS. If you like this album then continue with Houdini and The Maggot. If you are still interested then try Stoner Witch and Stag which have excellent songs but also have a lot of experimental BS that Melvins like to perform.

The Melvins were an aggressively abrasive unit from the very beginning and have always been an acquired taste to say the least, even to most grunge audiences. However, even the dauntingly heavy Gluey Porch Treatments and the thoroughly twisted Ozma had hints of punk melodies or catchy garage rock licks lightly sprinkled throughout, but on the firmly anti-commercial trio's third full length effort, any and all signs of normalcy are stripped away and quickly discarded. What results, is Bullhead, a hulking pile of dense metallic fury forged in a veritable orgy of feedback experiments and pure and utter dementia. The opening 3-chord assault of the oozing "Boris" says it all. Bullhead is an exercise in endurance, completely unrelenting in its resistance to accessibility. The tempos are slowed down the point of excruciating slowness; every note hanging for what seems like an eternity, with Buzzo and associates reveling in every second of crawling sonic bliss. Conjuring up the mental image of a stream of magma slowly flowing from the mouth of an erupting volcano, The Melvins' third album is power incarnate; its sheer display of might an incredibly impressive document of the band's bizarre yet fascinating musical agenda. Then again, Bullhead is not completely devoid of melody. "It's Shoved" has a swirling funk undercurrent that proves to be the group's poppiest composition to date and "Zodiac" is a far tighter, more focused version of the thrasy Brutal truth original. Even in the midst of a full on war against conventional rock, The Melvins don't forget their foundation, moving ahead, but stressing the importance of the past as well. As one would expect, Bullhead recruited a literal army of detractors, but the immensely influential LP also gained the Melvins a large group of admirers, including the heavily indebted Boris, named after Bullhead's first track. Love it or hate it though, Bullhead is undeniably a monumental feat in the world of heavy music and for any fan of The Melvins, punk, metal, or just noisy music overall, this CD is mandatory listening.