In a year like this, there’s something to be said for going crazy. If you have multiple personality disorder, severe paranoia or schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations, you never have to feel alone while you’re locked in your apartment talking to the walls! Which is why Melted Bodies have the right idea. How can you even make sense when the world outside the door barely even exists anymore, and the parts of it that do are madder than a hatter in a spin cycling washing machine? Just get into this nice comfortable long sleeve jacket, sit in this cushiony room, blast this fever dream in which daytime television is ground up into soylent green, and enjoy yourself.
Melted Bodies take the humor and ludicrous genre blending hysteria of Mr. Bungle and mix it with the chonky riffs and gleefully dripping sardonicism of System of a Down. In the process they skirt their tricycle somewhere in the vicinity of Troldhaugen, but with the big difference that Troldhaugen is cheerful and fun. Melted Bodies, on the other hand, is rather like a thin membrane of mental constructs holding back a bulging, writhing mass of utter insanity. At its lightest, it wryly resembles the gentlest of Mike Patton projects; at its ugliest, it gleefully chews on The Dillinger Escape Plan albums and spits the gouged out chunks of teeth and gum in your face.
“Ad People” is the primary emissary, puzzled together from the brain matter and skull splinters of a sales employee slamming his face into the keyboard with a manic grin. ‘I can’t stay positive when the world is beginning to rot,’ the voice from the telemarketeer intones between incessant beats and riffs played with shards of broken glass. Watch the video with your adblocker off for a brilliant bit of meta-commentary. It doesn’t stop there. The mood swings across the album are bipolar with a side of ADHD. “Club Anxious” swings from sarcastic bop to screaming, pounding distortion on a dime, “The Rat” vomits glittery Faith No More and “The Abbot Kinney Pedophiles” uses twisted spoken word on a backdrop of hyperactive staccato electronic riffing. It’s incredible the band is able to pull such an eclectic mixture together into a cohesive whole, but the biting condemnation of modern life ties it all up with a nice ribbon.
Enjoy Yourself is hyper-diverse, hyper-sardonic and hyper-energetic. Melted Bodies is an extremely creative band with an enormously attractive personality and a deep black cynicism that gives life to the razor sharp performances. Its wit is as sharp as its riffs, its hooks claw the brain like a bot fly and the grin carved into its face makes the Joker look like Mister Rogers. Not only is this insane album worth every minute, it might also be the most 2020 record to grace 2020, and for that reason alone it should not be missed.
Tracks to check out: “99 Scents,” “Ad People” and “Club Anxious.”
