Melts - Salicoutinaw

Label: 227/Hammerhead

Year: 1993

I'm excited about this particular post, because it resurrects an old classic that has been long gone and out of print for years, plus it's a record that was barely heard beyond the southeastern United States, but if it was released today, it would be huge. That's the real beauty of these music blogs, rescuing the lost treasures and re-introducing them to the right audience (that'd be you guys reading this). Much like Skullfuzz, this album would be a good candidate for the Sludge Swamp. 

I initially remembered I had this record because I was looking for music from Atlanta to pass along to James over at Beyond Failure, and I knew there was some Atlanta connection to this band, I just couldn't remember what. I did a little research, and determined that Melts were based out of North Carolina (Greensboro I think) but did feature Andrew Barker who lived in Atlanta and started the Gold Sparkle Band (there you go James...update the genome) after Melts. The copy I have of this album is the promo version that came to the radio station in Athens while I was music director there, so there's no information at all about the band. I d recall them playing Athens at least once and being really loud, and really strange, but it's a foggy memory at best. If anyone else has any info on this band, please do share.

So the music...

This is the "southern Melvins" basically. It's super heavy, knuckle dragging Sabbath as strangled by the noise rock canon, then dragged through the southern red clay. Goddamn it's good. Big, huge, riffs drenched in the finest bass and guitar tones, pummeling drums, and vocals that are 75% Kinghorse, 25% Cherubs...weird right? It's more metallic than Melvins (that doesn't seem right), but that's the band I find the most common ground with.

If you like, Melvins, Harvey Milk, Cerubs, Craw, Regraped, Godheadsilo, Electric Wizard...shit...if you like heavy music, I command you to download this, then remember what year it came out, then say, "Melvins, who?". 

DL