Buzz Osborne - This Machine Kills Artists

Essentially, Osborne has made a Melvins album without electric guitars or the rest of the band. And, in places, it almost works. The essential ingredients in the Melvins’ sound were always the peerless riffs, and thankfully, there are plenty in evidence here. From the writhing “Dark Brown Teeth” to the crushing “Laid Back Walking”, the album is stuffed with riffs almost immovably heavy yet inescapably catchy. Yet equally inescapable is the feeling that these songs would just work so much better with the addition of gratuitous distortion and a pounding rhythm section. The Melvins’ knack for throwing the weight of the full band behind a guitar riff is one of their strongest features, and the songs on this record just feel incomplete without that backing. Perhaps it is unfair to judge Osborne’s album against the work of his band, but it is difficult to avoid doing so when listening to album that sticks so faithfully to the Melvins formula.

Osborne would also have done well to pay a little more attention to his vocal style here, taming his signature bark to suit his stripped-back surroundings. The album’s best songs are those which feature slightly gentler vocals, such as the aforementioned “Dark Brown Teeth” and “Illegal Mona”, both of which oddly echo the solo output of fellow fuzz-loving guitar hero J Mascis. Conversely, the album’s most grating moments arrive when Osborne tries to marry the sound of his acoustic guitar with a melodramatic, Ozzy-esque yowl. To put it bluntly, it just sounds silly.

This isn’t a terrible record, and it is genuinely refreshing to see a rock veteran attempting to create something that strays from the standard Nick Drake-shaped template to which so many ex-rockers so faithfully adhere when they approach an acoustic album. It’s just a shame that, more often than not, the effect is more Tenacious D than Nirvana Unplugged. It is an interesting experiment, but realistically most listeners will struggle to get past the first couple of tracks before reaching for their trusty copy of Houdini.