Thirty years into the Melvins’ defiant, uproarious musical career, the sludge rock band is able to get away with trying just about anything at this point. No experimental sonic detour or thematic excursion will be viewed as too weird or outlandish, for it’s simply the Melvins being the Melvins. Longtime fans have followed the group down every bizarre musical avenue, and the band has continually repaid their devotion by keeping things sinister and strange for three decades now.

But the shake-up in their lineup for their raucous new album, Tres Cabrones (Spanish for “Three Bastards”), is a bold and brazen move by the Melvins, with the band’s recent Big Business collaborators Jared Warren and Coady Willis sitting this record out in favor of a return to the group’s untamed early days, as original drummer Mike Dillard joins in the fray with Dale Crover sliding over on bass alongside the ever-present Buzz Osborne. The new arrangement sees the band revisiting a slew of material that has been released in various forms throughout the group’s irrepressible career, all the while keeping their unseemly humor and abrasive attitudes fully intact.

The record launches emphatically with the churning riffs of “Dr. Mule”, which fittingly echoes the piercing, guitar-fueled anthems of the ’80s while reflecting the garage-rock demo days that gave birth to the band. “City Dump” (which, along with “You’re In The Army Now” and “99 Bottles of Beer” is lifted from the Gaylord 7″ released back in July) continues the strong start, with a filthy, doom-laden melody complimenting Buzz’s snarling vocals, as Dillard and Crover mesh fluidly while providing the track’s insistent rhythm.

“American Cow” was also released earlier this year in conjunction with a music festival in Minneapolis that was organized by the Melvins’ longtime record label, Amphetamine Reptile. And while the track does have a menacing edge to it, the song also swings with a modern assurance, with the longtime friends clearly connecting musically as they steamroll forward. But before you get the sense that the Melvins mean nothing but business on this collection, the first of three inconsequential throw-away numbers arrives in the form of “Tie My Pecker To A Tree”, which was a one-time comedy bit by none other than Cheech & Chong. Between “Pecker”, “99 Bottles of Beer”, and “You’re In The Army Now”, you have a goofy, trifling trio of songs that offer little musical value to the new collection other than assuring us all that the Melvins haven’t grown serious or sophisticated on us.

Thankfully, those slight stabs at humor are frequently followed by songs that demand your attention, even if loyal fans of the band have heard many of them before. “Dogs and Cattle Prods” is the longest track on the record, and the sprawling, experimental number oscillates between straight-forward metal and Ween-like sonic exploration, all culminating in a lengthy acoustic outro that proves the 9-minute number could have used some tweaks and edits. The hostile swirl of “Psycho-delic Haze” is one of four songs (along with album closer “Stick ‘Em Up Bitch”, the thunderous “Stump Farmer” and a hard charging cover of the Lewd’s “Walter’s Lips”) on Tres Cabrones that appeared on last year’s 1983 EP, with this pulsating version a slightly reworked twist on the original.

“I Told You I Was Crazy” has a dark, early-Sabbath malice to it, with the track gradually building to a fiery end before lightheartedly dissolving into video-game effects. It perfectly reflects the Melvins’ divergent approach to both their music and their career over the years – mixing plenty of innovative, head-banging sludge-metal with equal parts audacious insolence that has continually kept most of the music world at a comfortable arms length or more for their entire 30-year run. And while Tres Cabrones churns with the urgency and fire of a much younger band, the collection ultimately reveals more about the group’s raw early years and the gnarled musical roots that got them here, than providing any hints as to where in the hell the Melvins might possibly be going in the future.