REVIEW: Melvins - Thunderball

Explaining anything Melvins-related to the uninitiated is like trying to sell sand to Bedouins. You’re elated, proselytizing holy gospel about just how significant this group is, how their records all fit together, and how they’re 'low-key responsible for the creation of Nirvana'. Meanwhile, your victim is staring at you stone-faced and utterly numb in listless ennui, giving you that blobfish grimace. It’s only natural, because enjoying a band like the Melvins is a kind of chemical imbalance, a spiritual disorder, maybe even a curse. How can you sell a band that has so many albums, that really do not sound that alike?

It is true, Melvins have been around for what seems like eons at this point, and they’re moving briskly from one irregularity to the next. You’d have better odds wagering your kidney on a one-legged rooster race than guessing what they’ll come up with next. These sludge-lords have shifted line-ups many a time; dual basses, double drummers. Now they’re firmly entrenched in their 1983 sequence of albums, with Thunderball being the third, featuring Buzz “King Buzzo” Osborne and founding percussionist Mike Dillard (with bassist Dale Crover seemingly sitting this one out), now with the experimental accoutrements of Ni Maîtres and Void Manes. It’s very unusual these days to see a group putting out albums every year, a veritably 1970s pursuit, but Thunderball finds itself released scarcely under a year since the band’s last offering, Tarantula Heart. These guys seriously put the hustle in.

While the last few albums have had some of that whimsy tied to them, featuring amusing Beach Boys covers and explicit how-in-the-hell-is-this-a-real-song-title type tracks, you will not find such humour on Thunderball. Serious face on. What you get is a 35 minute-ish album that delivers the goods in droves. The opening track ‘King Of Rome’ dares to keep it compact and radio-sized, with a catchy hook and stellar guitarwork draped in a sheet of thin electronica. ‘Vomit Of Clarity’ is a passing detour into two minutes of ambient circuitry that feels like somebody leaked kombucha on a modular synth and let it record itself dying in agony. It's not bad. It's not good. It’s two minutes of bleeps and bloops.

Then comes the eleven minute brain-bender ‘Short Hair In A Wig,’ a progressive, cyclonic twirl into existential dread while Ni Maîtres and Void Manes concoct loops so twisted it’s a veritable category 4 hurricane. There’s plenty of variation in the drum work and riffs to keep the song from feeling too bulky, while the vocals spell out a dreadful portent alongside condemning drums. ‘Victory Of The Pyramids’ has to be the stand-out track, while also lengthy, it careens into a cosmic blues-boogie that is sludgier than a mud bath. The chorus hits. The chorus is either “Did he go?” or “Billy goat.” It rules. You don’t question it. Penultimate track ‘Venus Blood’ unfurls like a leviathan surfacing, hushed tension, bleak melody, then melodic outro riff buzzling like a thousand tiny electric bees. Then, ‘tis all over. Exuent stage left.

So yeah, Thunderball is shorter than Napoleon wading through wet cement. But it doesn’t waste a second. There’s no fat here, no padding. The Melvins seem to provide a damn fine album experience in the short time that they had. They have mastered the art of brevity when they want to. While the electronic collaborators only show up in noticeable ways a few times, the atmosphere they offer, especially in the back-end of the longer songs, adds an unnerving, abstruse zing that keeps things stimulating even when the riffs threaten to wear thin.

As fans of the band will know, they can be quite challenging to introduce to the uninitiated. In Thunderball, they might have found their reprieve, because the music here is not only accessible, but an exceptional introduction to the band itself for those that are unfamiliar. While the electronic sounds are novel, they compliment the bedrock sound of the band particularly well. Not to mention, they sound tenured. This is a band that has paid their dues in full and were making music when younger bands were still pottering about in nappies, yet they can still deliver sounds that are fresh and new decades later. Maybe not their most groundbreaking ritual, but a damn solid incantation nonetheless. Whatever is next for the band, it sure won’t sound like this. 

Score: 8/10

Thunderball was released on April 18th 2025.

Words: Kiarash Golshani

Photos: Melvins