The Melvins’ remarkable Houdini/Stoner Witch/Stag run of bone-rattling, first-class heaviness in the mid-1990s was updated with 2006’s charming (A) Senile Animal. And it was no fluke, because now comes the even better Nude With Boots, studio album number 19 (!). Bassist Jared Warren and second drummer Coady Willis (a.k.a. Big Business) return as the perfect-fit rhythm section for lifers Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, who are still communicating in their own avant-boogie metal language like twins separated at birth. “Billy Fish,” “The Smiling Cobra,” and “Kicking Machine” are among the best (and catchiest) songs they have written during their quarter-decade project in hard-rock deconstruction, summoning and scrambling Zeppelin, Saint Vitus, late-’80s thrash, and…vintage Melvins.
