ALBUM REVIEW: Melvins – Bad Mood Rising

By Kris Porter | December 20, 2022

Words by Kris Griffiths

Quick to relinquish the acoustic melodies of 2021’s Five-Legged Dog, Bad Moon Rising oozes with viscous fuzz, gnarled hypnotic riffs and borderline schizophrenic verbiage.

Moving seamlessly between the absurdist soundscapes of The Receiver and Empire State and softer and more structured refrains in It Won’t Or It Might, the album fully immerses the listener. Such duality is captured at its peak in the 14-minute ‘Mr Dog is Totally Right. The track is a wretched, drawn-out earworm of a song chock with bizarre coos and crows from singer Layne Staleyesque. This record is a powerful reintroduction to the quirks that have kept them relevant for nearly two decades.

Always abnormal and never boring, Never Say Sorry delivers a dissonant and mesmerising vocal performance soundtracked by body gyrating and endless riffage. While it lacks some of the dressing applied to other areas of the album, it is this song that stands out above the rest. The visceral, ritualistic drubbing Melvins spew across the acetone is of a calibre that most rockers dream of achieving.

To sum up an entire record in one word would often be too troublesome a task, the nuances and individuality of a listening experience too complex to be cheapened by one single descriptor. For Bad Moon Rising, however, the word is gnarly. Gnarly from the first dry slap of kick drum to the abrupt ending – a true masterclass in sludge-o-nomics taught in a way that only King Buzzo and Dale Crover can.