Melvins Houdini

Melvins: King Buzzo (vocals, guitar); Dale (vocals, drums); Lorax (bass).Additional personnel: Kurt Cobain (guitar, percussion); Bill Bartell (guitar, bass); Billy Anderson (bass); Al Smith, Mike Supple (percussion).Recorded at Brilliant Studios and Razor's Edge, San Francisco, California; Laundry Room, Seattle, Washington.To essay a concise, surefooted summation of the Melvins' catalog would be reductive at best, and laughable at worst. This is, of course, underground rock's trio of pranksters -- unpredictable and capable of complete musical about-faces in the turn of a measure. That said, Houdini is about as close as one gets to a representative Melvins album, and it vividly captures the band's unreconstructed power, vision, and musical strangeness. During the early-'90s purge of hair rock and candy-footed funk metal, the Melvins, as with many other acts, seemed fair game for a major label in search of another post-Nirvana gold mine. With Kurt Cobain's assistance, the band was snatch