By 1999, Melvins were already a band of legendary repute. Their uncompromising adherence to noisy rock and roll experimentation that blurred the line between grunge and sludge metal had already landed them—and lost them—a major label deal. The late Kurt Cobain had already called them one of his favorite bands, and they had already influenced scores of similarly noisy and experimental acts, such as Japan’s Boris, who are themselves named after a Melvins song.

And in 1999, Melvins released one of the most ambitious projects of their career: a trilogy of albums that each leaned into a pocket of their sound. The Maggot is the first and most aggressive of these albums, and even in a catalog as harsh and abrasive as Melvins’, it is a challenging album. But that challenge brings a great reward, because it might also be one of their best.

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After being dropped from Atlantic after Stag, Melvins leaned hard into the more experimental part of their sound that had been tempered by the Suits at their Major Label. And while Houdini and Stoner Witch weren’t exactly radio-friendly in their own right (I haven’t spent any time with Stag to know where it lands), it’s telling that their first release away from Atlantic dives deep into drone and avant grade, including 25 minutes of silence at the end of the closing tracks.

Two years and a deal with Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records separated Honky from the Trilogy, and while there’s nothing as out-there as the previous record, The Maggot is a far cry from accessible. The riffs are bigger than ever, slathered in some of the gnarliest fuzz ever put to tape. Tempos range from blistering punk to tectonic sludge, a few drone moments punctuating the record, such as the oscillating noise that bookends “Manky.”

It’s not the music that’s a little confounding: each song is divided up into two identically titled tracks, and even then, the first two songs are both called “Amazon” (though the digital version refers to the faster opening track as “amazon” and the second, heavier track as “AMAZON“). There’s also the song “We All Love Judy,” which is followed a few tracks later by a song called “Judy.” The two tracks don’t seem to be related in any way.

Also of particular note is a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown),” which even as doomy and crawling as they play it can’t help but be catchy.

Album closer “See How Pretty, See How Smart” is an absolute monster:  molten guitar fuzz rides a stoic and threatening riff with off-time drum crashes punctuating the lumbering tempo for nine minutes. Reverb-buried vocals moan long syllables over the festering distortion and cymbal bursts. It’s maybe the track that sounds the most like I think about Melvins sounding—a core thesis statement in a career marked by varied compositions and genre exploration (it also ends with the same sleigh bells and bass line that open The Bootlicker).

And when I was first getting into Melvins, this and The Bootlicker were actually my entry point—which I’ll admit is an odd place to start, but with a band like Melvins, there aren’t really wrong introductions. No matter what album you start with, it can’t give the full picture of who the band is (well…I’ll dive into that in a couple of entries). But the first two entries of their bizarre trilogy always stood out to me as maybe the Most Melvins they’ve ever been. And now that they’ve been reissued as a two-album* vinyl compilation—instead of an impossible-to-find three disc box set—I couldn’t be happier to have them in my collection. They’re as essential records as Melvins have ever put out.

*The Crybaby, the third album in the Trilogy, is primarily cover songs and some collaborative pieces, so I imagine they may have run into licensing problems.