Customer Reviews

Stag

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is probably the best album of Melvins' fairly brief career as major label recording artists. The riffs are heavy, but bright and bouncy rather than mired in sludge, and the 'experimental' elements are always hitched to great hooks. 'Bar-X the Rocking M' has a killer trombone solo, 'Skin Horse' is both hilarious and oddly touching, and 'Black Bock' is probably the most surprising track in Melvins' catalogue.

Less radio-friendly than 'Houdini' or 'Stoner Witch', but not nearly so weird as some other reviewers think. If you want Melvins at their most adventurous, try the excellent 'Honky' -- the next record they made after Atlantic dumped them for not selling as many records as Nirvana -- or the legendary 'Lysol' (also known just as 'Melvins' -- the one with the horserider on the front), the only full album featuring Joe Preston (Earth, Thrones). But there's no Melvins record that's not worth having.

The Melvins are one of the few bands to actually improve with the passage of time. With Stag, Buzzo and the boys alienated some of their die hard loyalists by opening up their sound from the slow, brutal, smart metal style they created into something much more grand and kaleidoscopic. This album features(at various points) sitar, coronet, ambient sound ditties, chipmunk styled vocals, and godforbid keyboards. They do all this without compromising any of their massive RAWK spirit. It is one of the most accesible Melvins records(there is something for everyone) and at the same time one of their oddest.

Buy it today!

i've never understood why some melvins fiends dont like this album. the melvins are obviously trying to expand and try out some new styles on this one, and i think it works perfectly well. it has none of the heaviness of gluey or bullhead and none of the twisted punk of stoner witch, but its still not going to appeal to anyone who still listens to the radio. yoko ono had it on her best of 1996 list, if thats an endorsement for you. definetly superior to honky.

Don't buy from an american seller on amazon.com; they charge insane amounts of money! as you may notice! I don't know why this important piece of the Melvins catalogue is currently unavailable in America, but you can get it at a reasonable price at amazon.co.uk -- do it!

With this, Melvins basically showed lower tier bands (yet more beloved by the unwashed) like Tool and Faith No More how to make an eclectic, sort of "90s alternative" (ugh) album, and make it... good! With real riffs, substantial experimentalism and actual songwriting beneath the gimmicks! No, ultimately people didn't really get the picture.

Their spooky drawl, dinosaur drums, general tightness as a band and riff city passport were enough to make an extremely satisfying straight up sludge metal/rock album if they wanted (see Houdini), but they bloated and discombobulated Stag with minimal trance, noise, faux-Satanic folk and various other oddities, giving the album a kind of creepy dreamstate counterpart to the bursts of heaviness. It's largely successful; out of 16 tracks, there are only one or two duds. Nowadays Melvins release 10 songs and half of them are skippable.

This probably isn't the band's best major label infiltration, let alone album, but they're all totally different animals and comparisons are pointless.

"Stag" marks the last major label Melvins release, following their two most accessible (and therefore popular) albums of the time, "Houdini" and "Stoner Witch". Those two albums offered very sludgy, dirgy post-grunge type outings, all the time incorporating strong melody and solid structures. With "Stag" the band took a more experimental route, often throwing conventional song structures out of the window, leaving an album that is confusing, yet utterly compelling.

The album starts with a bang, "The Bit" is classic Melvins, full of powerful riffs and contrasts between brooding eerie verses and huge choruses. The album then takes its experimental turn, as from "Hide" to "Cottonmouth" it is difficult to make out any songs with standard structuring. Examples of this include "The Bloat" which starts with some old school slide guitar, then strips down to a sumptuous melodic bass line and some rather contrasting angry vocals. "Black Bock" starts almost like a kindergarten song, but then erupts into a swirling psychedelic closing section, full of lush vocal harmonies and trippy guitars. "Buck Owens" is another confusing song, with twisting rhythm and timing changes, almost like the band is experimenting with a warped take on prog metal. Fans of the Melvins' dirge will not be disappointed here, especially with "Goggles", a thunderous snail-paced tour-de-force of Buzzo's riffing.

Overall if you like grunge/post-grunge/stoner stuff, this album should appeal to you. If you like your music with a deal of experimentation it will definitely be worth your time, but for others who want something a little more straight laced, you'll be best to stick with the more accessible Melvins work, such as "Bullhead", "Houdini" and "Stoner Witch".

Stag shwos Melvins' range as its widest. There is material on this album you never ever thought Melvins would do - or possibly would even have the ability to do. The music ranges from elctric sound experiments to melodic, semi-acoustic pop to their trademark heavy metal sludge. And they rock, too. It might not completely satisfy those who fundamentally force Melvins into the slow-metal-sludge - genre, but for anyone who is in for an interesting ride, it's a go.

As stated in other reveiws and as ive seen with other Melvins fans i know, this album isnt vary popular but this is actually my favorite album... to find a grunge track with horns and the start of "The Bit" just made this an amazing album which lets the Melvins keep its name as a great grunge band that Nirvana [followed] but Melvins don't get nearly enough credit... if u can find this CD defintaly buy it especially if your some [...] Nirvana fan who thinks there so origional and creative...

Holy pale ale, this thing will cause your ears to flap as the sound comes flying straight at you like those awful flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz that scared me badly when I was a kid. Now, I know nothing about the Melvins or their particular strata within the rock genre, and that's fine. I don't care if this is sludge metal fizz hack cringe or whatever.

I do care greatly that lunatics let these fellows get loose in a studio and let them make ample use of everything in sight to record this varied foray into the sonic abyss. It seems, as far as I can decipher, that everybody in the band, and it clearly is King Buzzo's band, plays everything. And it works!!!!!

Stag is fun and completely all over the musical map, which what I need about once a week when I escape to the lair to listen to weird music and do research for compilation CDs and for my radio show, should I ever be rich enough to own a station, because no commercial station is gonna play Stag, now is it? The Bit roars to life, Lacrimosa shuffles around, Buck Owens amuses, Googles raises the hackles on the back of your neck, The Bloat, well, . . .enough already.

You need to salt away a copy. Sometimes, you just have to shake, rattle, and roll your brain and stir fry the gray matter with a dash of the madcap. Stag goes down like cold whiskey and burns all the way and then causes you glow and tremble. You may find it best to listen to a track or two at at time unless you happen to have the rest of the day off. (My friend Crevice, who threw up after I played for him "Jerk Out" from Pandemonium by the Time, will likely fare little better with Stag but for very different reasons.) It might not be active on the radio but I bet it is radioactive. Whew!

Once upon a time-- July 1996, to be precise-- I took four stamp-sized hits of windowpane and listened to this album. I had never listened to it before that, because I had just bought it that afternoon and immediately went out and bought the acid. But after that night, I was never quite the same. The songs blended into each other perfectly, with tunes that varied from lush and beautiful to so harsh that I thought I was listening to all of the sinners of hell screaming in unison. No other previous Melvins album has quite the same intensity. Afterwards, that same week, I went to a Melvins concert where many of these tracks were played, and it sounded so vibrant that all the LSD seemed to rush right back into my cranium. Quite simply, I loved it. A bit of a warning, though: If you don't like diverse albums with a mix of flavours, you'll be very disappointed. I, however, believe that variety is the spice of life, and in that case Stag is the entire spice aisle at Smith's. Enough spoken- go buy it, already! Oh, and don't forget the acid.