The Melvins, like Aerosmith, will not go away. This is a group that took six years to perfect its sound for 1993's flawless Houdini LP (though Bullhead was a fine preamble), only to spend the subsequent six years in a creative desert. They became obsessed with concepts: releasing a single every month for a year (the Wedding Present tried this in 1992-- it's a bad idea), penning anti-records like Prick under the name Snevlim, and generally snickering their way around the fact that their output, to put it bluntly, sucked. For a band that's been together going on 15 years, the Melvins have on one level maintained a monotony that rivals the Grateful Dead.

Opening with the childish flip-flop of Leif Garrett singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit," The Crybaby looks to be as entertaining as a Marilyn Manson karaoke party; you might as well be listening to Howard Stern interview Garrett. There are two other cheeky failures here-- "Ramblin' Man" and "Okie from Muskogee," sung by Hank Williams III and featuring Helmet's Henry Bogdan on lap steel. Pastiche is nothing new, folks-- this isn't irony, and the fact that the band are so obviously trying to be ironic is comeuppance in the face of their best intentions. Foetus' miserable "Mine is No Disgrace," on the other hand, now that's irony.

The rest of The Crybaby is pretty decent; the strength and diversity of the artists they work with inevitably produces some showstoppers. As you'd expect, the two tracks sung by David Yow stand out: the Jesus Lizard's "Blockbuster" done Big Black style, and an original thrash collaboration, "Dry Drunk," which is needlessly interrupted by a couple minutes of lame reverie c/o Godzik Pink. The song with Skeleton Key, "Spineless," exists somewhere between Unsane and the Miami Sound Machine; it's funny as shit. Mike Patton also contributes "G.I. Joe," which doesn't actually have anything to do with the Melvins-- he's just cutting tape per his solo records.

With The Crybaby, the Melvins purport to be capping a trilogy (following The Maggot and The Bootlicker) with heady implications. The band have always made every effort to be inventive and maintain their trademark sound, but up until this point-- if this was really a trilogy from the start-- the music has not validated any philosophical bend. It's telling that their finest release in almost 10 years is a compilation of work with other artists.

-Chris Ott