After 31 years in the music game, The Melvins have reached a point where they have a blank check to do whatever their hearts desire. To be fair, the groundwork has been set for a while and the band has always followed their muse throughout their career. But for the past few batch of albums, there’s seemed to be a philosophy of “Why the hell not?” It’s an attitude that’s pushed to simultaneously logical and illogical ends on their latest album, Hold It In (Ipecac).

Hold It In finds The Melvins with a supergroup status as their membership has expanded to include the Butthole Surfers’ Paul Leary (guitar/vocals) and Jeff Pinkus (bass) as part of the fold with unsinkable members Buzz Osborne (lead guitar/vocals) and Dale Crover (drums). On paper, it may read as Butthole Surfers meets The Melvins, but Hold It In is in fact very much a Melvins record, even with Leary penning three of the songs and having a fairly large presence with his guitar parts. Still, it’s hardly business as usual. In fact, if you needle drop on any of the opening four songs on the album, you’ll get entirely the wrong idea about the album. It jumps from fairly typical riff-heavy Melvins to a upbeat alt-rock pop number sung through a vocoder to punkish rocker to a psychedelic, ambient instrumental soundscape.

While the rest of the album doesn’t have nearly that many drastic mood swings, Hold It In is all over the place. It contains probably some of the most hook-laden songs in The Melvins’ catalog, but on the flipside, some of those same songs almost play as parodies. The band has never been strangers to inserting humor into their songs, but there are points where it’s hard to get a firm grasp on what’s really happening. But then they’ll turn around and nail some fierce heavy groove before taking a left turn into psychobilly territory. Then the album ends with a 12-minute track that disintegrates into what seems to be random studio finds and ambient noises.

Hold It In plays like the band was open to any and all suggestions while in the studio. As such, it hangs together fairly poorly as just a collection of songs. The performances and lyrics are as solid as can be, but the whiplash of styles will make you wish that someone had taken control and reigned in some of the flights of fancy. Subsequently, it’s hard not to have mixed feelings about this mixed bag.