The Melvins, Everybody Loves Sausages
Featured Album
The band's sincere love of music of all kinds really shines through
When The Melvins put out an album of covers, a little irreverence, both in song choice and in execution, is to be expected. Deciding to replicate the electric piano intro to Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” with some chintzy-sounding Casio tones, and completely disregarding the second verse of the song: par for the course. Turning The Jam’s “Art School” into an oi-punk anthem, complete with introductory chanting and a spoken outro from someone affecting an over-the-top British accent (“Is this too Rough Trade?”): not surprising. And if any other group puts a Throbbing Gristle homage and the theme to John Waters’s Female Trouble on the same LP, please contact us immediately. But when Buzz Osbourne, in the press materials, states unequivocally that “we REALLY like all of these songs,” he’s not just flapping his gums. The group (joined by a handful of friends, including Neurosis’s Scott Kelly, Foetus’s JG Thirwell and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm) tears through obscurities from nearly forgotten California punk groups like Pop-O-Pies and Tales of Terror with the same eagerness and fervor that’s bestowed upon faithful renditions of Venom’s “Warhead” and David Bowie’s “Station To Station.” That said, it’s when The Kinks’ fuddy-duddy late-era track “Attitude” is turned into a great Buzzcocks outtake, or The Fugs’ “Carpe Diem” becomes a long-lost Nuggets track, that the adventurous spirit of Everybody Loves Sausages, and The Melvins’ sincere love of music of all kinds, really shines through.
