SHINY OBJECTS: Melted Bodies - 'The Inevitable Fork LP'
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MELTED BODIES
’The Inevitable Fork LP’
(Self-released)
So this is a new album, but only partially, as a few tracks on it have been heard before on ‘The Inevitable Fork vol. 1’ and ‘The Inevitable Fork vol. 2’ EPs, released in November 2022 and June 2023 respectively. The rest of the LP are the tracks for the final ‘The Inevitable Fork vol. 3’ EP, which can also be heard separately (but only here and in other streaming services, not on Melted Bodies’ Bandcamp like the other two), and several connecting interludes featuring the amazing Angela Seo of Xiu Xiu which help piece the whole shebang togehter - although not in the same order as the EPs. Confused yet? I hope not, because trust me when I say this admittedly unusual structuring is by far the easiest part to manage of this whole crazy endeavour.
Let’s be clear here - I get it why these people gave the option of digesting the thing in smaller bites. 68 minutes is a very long album by any standards, especially today’s, and when you make music that is so unashamedly crazy and constantly full-on like this, it is admittedly hard to take it in one sitting. In case this is your first encounter with Melted Bodies, consider this your warning. It’s fun to call music “crazy” and writers often do for several reasons, but I personally tend to shy away from it so that when something is really crazy, you understand what you’re getting into. This is crazy. Mr. Bungle or “a heavy metal Oingo Boingo”, as one delightful YouTube comment I saw suggests (and which is also a good definition for Mr. Bungle themselves, frankly), seem to be the most common comparisons, but really, most of the album sounds like Meshuggah, System Of A Down, Dead Kennedys, Sleepwalker and Unsane all decided to make a collaborative album without hearing each other’s parts, and then passed the whole thing along with a 24-pack of Red Bull for a sleep-deprived Devin Townsend to put it together. There’s fat industrial grooves, grind surges, manic pop hooks, sneering urban noise rock vibes, the occasional shockingly beautiful calm-down-for-a-second moments and just layers of unexplainable noise enveloping everything. And it’s not like these are “parts” of songs - no, most of the time there’s a random selection of these elements all playing at once. It’s like that caleidoscopic debut Pyramids album was dipped in a bucket of cocaine and then dropped in the middle of an ArcTanGent moshpit. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, and while consistently great, it’s not consistently brilliant, as it would be an album-of-the-year, 10/10 thing if it was. But the natural wavering of quality throughout is maintained within acceptable standards for it to still feel like a great album at the end, even if you might feel like you’ve only digested like 45% of it.
Before you, the uninitiated, ask - should you go for the EPs, or just dive in and listen to the whole thing? Well, they really are different experiences. You do get the Angela-enriched interludes with the LP, and that’s really a huge plus (and by the way, they don’t really “connect” anything - they just add to the overwhelming sense of confusion, and that’s absolutely fine), but it’s also a big investment, so if you’re still doubtful of whether your brain can process all of this, maybe dip your fingers in the EPs first. The different running order of the LP really does make a difference and some songs will hit you in another way because of where they’re placed on the album. It’s kinda inexcusable that ‘Talk Some More About It’ wasn’t chosen as a closing song, as it’s clean-sung, mellow yet emotionally touching crescendo would have been perfect for it, but hey, if there’s one rule here, is that Melted Bodies won’t do what we expect them to. For better or worse.
[8]
Out now on their Bandcamp. Find Melted Bodies on Instagram, Facebook and Spotify.
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