Some bands are terrific and some bands are silly and then, occasionally, you get those rare bands that are terrifically silly. Green Jelly spring to mind, as do Big Dumb Face (oh come on, they were a lot of fun!) and now, we can add Meltdon to that list. Hailing from Switzerland, Meltdown have named their album ‘Boobs are for heroes’, styled the inside cover on a marvel comic and given their songs titles like ‘boobs on a horse’ (anatomically incorrect, but what an image). Moreover, despite the fact that the lyrics are frequently ludicrous, the band play their heavy ass metal dead straight with the result that ‘boobs are for heroes’ is an album you can headbang to with a smile.
Opening with ‘tales of the intergalactic sandwiches’, Meltdown get things off to a flying start with brutal riffs, occasional stabs of face melting bass and a vocal that approximates the sound of the Melvins being lightly sodomized by Slayer. From the depths a voice screams out “do you know what rock means?” announcing the unwelcome arrival of ‘rock the fuck up’, a slithery metal beast that takes nu-metal’s posturing and filters it through the lens of Primus and refused. It’s heavy, slightly unpleasant and heavier than a heavy thing covered in even heavier things. Furious, frenetic and fun, ‘rock the fuck up’ does exactly what it says on the tin. ‘Gang bang cartoon box’, happily, does not involve the listener in compromising sexual activity but it does assault the eardrums with heavily distorted bass, guitar and a lascivious desire to hump your leg as you try to sneak out the door. Reminiscent of the Beastie Boys when they thought they were a hardcore band it’s got a pretty gnarly groove to it. Stepping up the pace is the brutal ‘I won’t be submitted’ which flits between snotty vocals and searing riffs with a nasty sneer upon its face, only for ‘four knights of sound’ to lay the smack down with a super punked-up metal riff and vocals which aren’t so much a set of coherent lyrics as an audible smear that spreads out slowly across the churning backdrop. It’s cool (really) but not for the faint of heart. An album highlight, ‘hallucination in wonderland’ is a full-tilt nightmare of sound with throbbing bass, cacophonous percussion and layered screams that seem to hang in the air somewhere between the speakers, just looking for a fight to pick.
The album’s second half does not get off to any more sensible a start with the ‘boobs on a horse’, another album highlight that pits a frivolous name against some brilliantly brutal riffing that sends the adrenalin surging. Things continue with the equally unstable ‘Foolish soul’, a track that spins out on Rage Against The Machine and Primus, the earth-shaking bass doing much to undermine the foundations of whatever property you’re foolish enough to play the album in. Interestingly, the track takes a more measured detour that underscores the impressive musicianship that lies at the heart of a band that does much to hide its skills under a barrage of ear-splitting noise, although it’s equally possible the quiet passage is just a ruse to make the heavier elements seem all the more brutal when they come smashing back in. Opening with a sinister, wah-powered riff, ‘Gabriel’ builds to a ferocious peak whilst the oddly titled (it reads like a Nike advert) ‘no limits, no rules, no fear’ has a funky vibe that suggests the band have more than a passing love for the earliest days of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The album comes to a cataclysmic conclusion with ‘Learn to burn’, a punky maelstrom of diseased riffs and scabrous vocals, all of which do a good job of persuading you that the best thing to do is probably sink another beer and play the album again, just in case the band themselves are lurking round the corner with a baseball bat.
Whether you like Meltdown or not will depend largely on a) whether you have a sense of humour (you should) and b) whether you like genre-hopping punk metal with attitude (you really should). With their roots in the irreverent US underground, Meltdown deliver plenty of attitude, a fuck-ton of searing riffs (that’s a metric fuck-ton rather than an imperial one) and the occasional laugh or two.
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