King Buzzo did not let damaging critiques cease him from believing within the Melvins’ Hostile Ambient Takeover.
“Numerous folks hate it. It bought some actually nasty critiques,” he recalled within the liner notes for a vinyl reissue. “I keep in mind enjoying the completed album in its entirety for a buddy of mine from New Zealand, and he simply sat staring on the audio system with a damage look on his face for the complete 45-minute period.”
Somewhat than taking this suggestions as an indication to return to the drafting board, the Melvins launched the LP as is. “I knew he was fallacious,” Buzzo explains. “I would not change a goddamn factor about it.”
Launched on April 16, 2002, two years after the band’s bold The Maggot / The Bootlicker / The Crybaby trilogy, Hostile Ambient Takeover provided a whirlwind tour by means of a wide range of kinds, from the brief rockabilly-on-amphetamines blast of “Dr. Geek” by means of the slow-crawling 16-minute closing epic “The Anti-Vermin Seed.”
“The Idiot, The Meddling Fool” begins off as one of many album’s extra conventional Melvins sludgy riff-fests earlier than taking a sudden left flip into warped synth-pop. The frenzied “The Mind Heart at Whipples,” which takes its title from a beloved Twilight Zone episode, rides a guitar riff that sounds just like the bizarre, barely creepy uncle of the one which opens Stevie Nicks’ “Fringe of Seventeen.”
Hearken to Melvins Carry out ‘The Mind Heart at Whipples’
Buzzo, drummer Dale Crover and bassist Kevin Rutmanis are joined on numerous tracks by Device guitarist Adam Jones and multi-instrumentalist David Scott Stone, who add texture and depth with analog synthesizers, thunder sheets and different uncommon devices.
Hostile Ambient Takeover can also be the LP the place the Melvins started their lengthy working relationship with engineer / mixer Toshi Kasai. “These guys aren’t afraid to be completely different,” Kasai stated of the band in a 2021 Tape Op interview. “That perspective completely mirrored my concept of creating music. Working for different, mainstream, greater folks, I do not know what number of instances I wished to give up. Then the Melvins confirmed up and it was like, ‘That is it!'”
Buzzo concludes: “I sincerely consider [Hostile Ambient Takeover] is likely one of the finest issues we have ever accomplished. We’re actually happy with it and it has stood the check of time.”
Hostile Ambient Takeover initially arrived as a collection of seven” vinyl singles, with one of many album’s songs on facet A, backed by newly recorded covers of Alice Cooper’s “Return of the Spiders,” Mott the Hoople’s “Jerkin’ Krokus” and tracks by Ramones, the Gun Membership and the Tubes. (It was additionally launched in CD format.) The album acquired a correct 12″ reissue in 2021, with the B-sides collected onto a separate vinyl launch, Hostile Ambient Apart from.
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