Melvins - Lice-All

Lice-All is the Melvins at their slowest, sludgiest and most gloriously stubborn, a continuous slab of noise first released in 1992 under a very different name.

The album originally appeared on Boner Records as Lysol, until the owners of the household cleaner objected. The label hastily renamed it, covering the original title with black tape on the jackets, and later reissues adopted the cheeky sound-alike Lice-All. The legend only adds to the appeal of one of the band's most uncompromising and influential records.

Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover and bassist Joe Preston built the album as a single megacomposition, its six songs flowing into one another. It opens with Hung Bunny, more than ten minutes of glacial, droning guitar and patient, punishing drums that dares you to keep up by slowing down. Roman Dog Bird keeps the crawl going before the trio turns to their heroes, with a heavy cover of Flipper's Sacrifice and a pair of Alice Cooper songs, Second Coming and The Ballad of Dwight Fry, bent completely to their will.

With Teeth closes things with a short, sharp shock.

For fans of sludge, doom and the murkier edges of grunge, this is essential Melvins, heavy as wet concrete and just as hard to move.