Album Review: The Melvins - Chicken Switch

Album Review: Melvins - Chicken Switch
Review by Danny Crombie - November 20, 2009

The whole idea of a remixes album is a tired one at very least, Mark Ronson does that shit and only wankers like his crap new versions of "Valerie" (who liked it first time round anyway?), the Kaiser Chiefs and whatever flavour of the month crap he gets his ugly mitts on.

But lets forget about him as he’s an entirely different rant altogether and focus on why we’re all here; The Melvins. Being cool motherfuckers and always having something interesting to do or say, they came up with an even better idea of giving some fuckhead from Scandinavia one of their songs and saying “Here, make this cool again/make me more money” and instead gave a bunch of fuckhead DJs etc an entire album each to do whatever they liked with.

The result? It’s ugly as sin and I love it! It’s just noise, drumbeats, feedback, screams and bleeps – what could be more anti-fucking-fashion than that?

Well, I suppose it is sort-of fashionable to just make a racket and piss people off because ya know Lou Reed and John Cale did it waaay back and then The Stooges did it with Fun House (which I’m sure you’ve all been told before is the best record ever) and then of course there’s Sonic Youth – oh wait, Lee Ranaldo is on this!

While I’m here I should also tell you about a great band called Child Abuse, actually the name says it all doesn’t it? It’s ugly ugly music to say the least and if you like Chicken Switch you’ll dig them (or say you do so the guys at your local alt-alt-music store might think you’re cool) or if you like them you’ll love this record.

There’s not much I can really say but how ugly the album really is, it’s so ugly it’s absolutely great and if they had this on a jukebox I’d put it on immediately. I do that with Overkill by Motorhead because it lasts 9 minutes and that repeated three times will ruin the atmosphere in any student bar (try it if you don’t believe me).

My personal favourites on this pile of shit are "Eggnog Trilogy "which really starts to kick arse half way through, "The Silky Apple Butter of Youth" which is a bit psychedelic and a nice break from the aural pain inflicted throughout, "4th Floor Helicopter" sounds like a band called Death O’Connor who are great friends of mine and "Overgoat" is another track that makes you stand up and say, "WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WRITING ABOUT THIS NOISE, I SHOULD BE BEATING UP PEOPLE IN STARBUCKS!"

Yeah, so anyway, I reckon The Melvins will never make back the money that went out on this (did any money go out on this!?) unless people actually read reviews from pathetic little faux-journos like myself and say “wow, someone actually went to all this effort to write about something that doesn’t make sense at all, I’m totally buying it!”

So, go and listen to it! If you’re an artistic electronic media student you could totally get away with submitting it as your own work too – how great is that!? This is honestly one of my favourite records in a while because there are still big established bands out there who just say fuck it and don’t care about the consequences - it’s like fishing next to powerlines.

Additional notes
The complete 15 tracklisting for Chicken Switch with the contributing artist - all songs are newly named by their remixer.
1. Washmachine Sk8tronics - Eye Yamatsuka
2. Emperor Twaddle Reemix - Christoph Heemann
3. She Chokes Her Dying Breath and Does It In my Face - V/Vm
4. AAHHH... - John Duncan
5. Linkshänder - Matmos
6. EggNog Trilogy i) She's Ivanhoe ii) Cancer iii) Inebriated - Lee Ranaldo
7. SNOW REM REM IBVZ - Merzbow
8. Prick Concrete/Revolution M - David Scott Stone
9. Queen (Electroclash Remix) - The Panacea
10. The Silky Apple Butter of Youth - Sunroof!
11. 4th Floor Hellcopter - Kawabata Makoto
12. disp_tx_skel_mach_murx - Farmers Manual
13. Overgoat - Void Manes
14. Over from Under the Dog, Girl & Boy Treatment - RLW
15. Hard Revenge Milly Bloody Battle VS. The Melvins Ozmatized Gore Police (Feat. Cardopusher of the Five Deadly Venoms) - Speedranch