Those fine people at Southern Records sent me my pre-ordered copy of this today. Off the first listen, here are some thoughts:

I) While I really like Nude With Boots, the production on the guitar tone was a bit thin, I thought. Not so here: 'The Bride Screamed Murder' has a delightfully heavy, thick guitar sound.

II) This album really marks the total absorption of the Big Business guys into Melvins. Almost all the drumming is more like their live show than the last two albums, dense heavy flurries of beats. 'Inhumanity and Death' has some incredible drumming, parts with a skittering, almost idm sort of sound, and others being the closest Melvins have got to blastbeats. On top of that, there's a lot of prominent bass work, with quite a few bits where Buzzo drops out altogether to leave bass and drums.

III) This album also sees a welcome return of the Melvins somewhat warped sense of humour; lots of call and response shout outs, unsettling, Stag style pitch shifted vocals on 'I'll finish you off', and what sounds like an incredibly ramshackle and weird attempt at jazz on Hospital Up. Not to mention P.G. X 3, which opens with harmonica and folky melodic vocal harmonies, and then goes quite insane.

It'll take more listens to tell for sure, but at the moment I'm pretty confident this will end up ranking pretty highly on my end of year list.