The legendary Melvins like The Fall seem hugely prolific, producing an album every couple of years, though being what they are, each LP is usually ¾ great and ¼ experimental chuff that comes from a "throw it at the wall"-style approach. Welcome to the world of The Melvins…

This is the eighteenth (?) album from The Melvins, though the third from the latest incarnation of the band which absorbed Big Business from 2006's A Senile Animal. BB also have a new record (Mind the Drift) and weirdly enough provide a built-in support band for the Melvins - though the strength of this line-up is the vocal interplay between King Buzzo and bassist Jared Warren and the hypnotic duelling drums of Dale Crover and Coady Willis (...which has to be seen to be believed...).

It's odd business as usual as they tear into 'The Water Glass', which appears to be about ten songs in one and should be the killer opener on upcoming gigs. Starting off as trademark Melvins, pitched somewhere between Flipper and Sabbath, the song drives off into a drone before the twin-drums tear off into overdrive. Then even stranger, some military drumming gives way to a bizarre Drill Instructor-chant that sounds like a demented Adam & the Ants. Yes, odd business as usual...

'Evil New War God' and 'Pig House' seem to be more the kind of things long-term fans would expect - though the former does add keyboards not far from parts of the latest Harvey Milk record. 'I'll Finish You Off', meanwhile, is almost tuneful - though Plan B's claims that the Big Business-version of the Melvins is "pop" still seems rather far-fetched.

'Electric Flower' through to 'Inhumanity and Death' seems more experimental, shifting through the many styles of the Melvins - though glam-style chanting and what sounds like free-jazz-muzak played by rabid hyenas are some of the highlights. The Melvins are famous for cover versions, choice interpretations have included a Schwarzenegger-update of Dead Kennedys' 'California Uber Alles', a powerhouse take on The Germs' 'Lexicon Devil', a superior version of the Floyd's 'Interstellar Overdrive', an anthemic take on Kiss's 'Goin' Blind', and a duo of early Alice Cooper songs on their celebrated Lysol. The previous two albums from this line-up have avoided cover versions - unless you count the live conclusion to their set a few years ago which was twin-military drumming, bizarre samples, and the bassist singing Chris De Burgh's 'Lady in Red'!

Here The Melvins cover the most famous song by The Who - 'My Generation'; this seems a very odd move, though I'm sure they used to play 'I Can See for Miles' back in the early-Eighties. A song that is far too over-familiar and was pointlessly covered by Oasis who played it exactly the same apart from the strange "shee-ein"-vocal maladies of Liam Gallagher doesn't immediately appeal The Melvins play it in a fairly unrecognisable way, the first half much slower and in a different key that made me think of the bass-line to the original 'Tainted Love'. The second half sounds more like one of the many acts influenced by the Melvins, the mighty Earth.

The Bride Screamed Murder concludes in a suitably freaky manner with 'P.G. x 3' - starting off with a Morricone-style Spaghetti Western theme (think 'Man with the Harmonica') it then shifts into 'Peggy Gordon', a Canadian folk-song that featured in the Nick Cave-penned Western, The Proposition. By the end it's sounding like a bastard blend of Laurie Anderson and Thrones.

So....it's that odd business as usual and the best album yet from this version of The Melvins...