From the first 90 seconds of The Bride Screamed Murder (the sort of trashy B-movie title perfect for the group's school-binder-metal MO), it seems like this most recent incarnation of the Melvins-- longtime mainstays Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, backed by Big Business' Jared Warren and Coady Willis-- is content to stay the course and follow the return-to-form lead of their last two albums. That said, staying the course isn't exactly what the Melvins are best known for, so while the transformation of "The Water Glass" mid-track from state-of-the-art sludge into an honest-to-goodness marching song is unexpected, the fact that the Melvins opted to switch gears isn't a shocker. After all, it's following those sorts of counterintuitive impulses, for better (various B-sides from their 1997 AmRep singles collection) or worse (their Leif Garrett-flavored cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), that make this band worth a damn as it proudly trudges into its third decade.
Unfortunately, The Bride Screamed Murder is one of those cases where taking the road less traveled leads to nowhere. Some fans might beg to differ, of course. They'll roll with the punches offered by indecisive three-in-one tracks like "Inhumanity and Death” and "Electric Flower". Maybe they'll view the arch grunge moves of "Hospital Up" as a pithy meta-commentary, and get a chuckle out of the tune's Spinal Tap jazz odyssey rooster-crowing coda. They might also get a kick out of the twerpy ending to "I'll Finish You Off", where someone's scat-tastic be-bopping leads to the "My Sharona" hook is banged out while "My Generation" is sung over it. When it turns out that such an ending actually foreshadows a lugubrious Flipper-like stumble through "My Generation", what was a brief moment turns into a seven-minute-long joke.
However, if that all doesn't sound appealing to you, you'll probably hear The Bride Screamed Murder as an album full of unfinished sketches and lazy doodles masquerading as proper tunes. The digressions will either come off as failed experiments or unfunny jokes, a handful of good ideas undercut by either their context or their brevity. Any patience engendered by the Melvins' countless good works will be tested by those willing to slog through this scattershot mess. The Bride Screamed Murder is the sort of album one might expect from a long-in-the-tooth group trying to rediscover its purpose and rejuvenate itself. That it comes on the heels of what seemed to be the band's rejuvenation makes it all the more disappointing.
