Basses Loaded

Basses Loaded is the Melvins' 21st album, released on 3 June 2016. The idea behind it is in the title: instead of a single bassist, the record gathers several players, mostly people who had worked with the band over the previous decade. Steven Shane McDonald of Redd Kross makes his Melvins debut here, and Krist Novoselic, a co-founder of Nirvana, drops in as a guest.

It sits in the middle of a very busy stretch for the band, arriving in the same year as Three Men and a Baby. Much of the material had already surfaced on two limited EPs, Beer Hippy and War Pussy, and on a split release with Le Butcherettes called Chaos as Usual, so this pulls those songs together in one place. It is a good way into the band's sludge metal side, with each bassist leaving a different mark on the sound. One track, "Choco Plumbing", even turned up in an episode of the Cartoon Network show Uncle Grandpa.