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Do IT this week: Layering
Influential rock group from Aberdeen, Wash., to perform new songs, favorites at Grog Shop
By Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal music writer
Published on Thursday, Jul 31, 2008
Let's get the standard ''The Melvins are the godfathers of grunge'' stuff out of the way.
The band, which will perform Wednesday at The Grog Shop, is a seminal, highly influential metal group formed in 1983 and originally from Aberdeen, Wash. Its music is one of the deepest roots of the grunge tree that made a lot of Pacific Northwest bands and their copycats rich in the 1990s.
Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic were big Melvins fans and used to hang around the band like lonely puppies, with Cobain spending some time as an unofficial roadie and auditioning for the bass spot. Melvins drummer Dale Crover played on Nirvana's original 10-track demo, and appears on Nirvana's debut Bleach and the B-side collection Incesticide.
The Melvins are a common reference point for many other doom/sludge/metal bands including popular Japanese metal trio Boris, which is not only named for a Melvins song but wrote an ode to the band called Buzz-In on the 2008 album Smile. The Melvins were also name-dropped twice in the teen pregnancy comedy Juno.
''Yeah, but we're still not on the soundtrack,'' guitarist/singer Buzz Osborne said of the Juno references while driving the band van somewhere in Montana.
''I like it, but I'd like it better if I was cashing a big check as a result of it. All the accolades but none of the cash, is what we like to say. But, whatever. It doesn't hurt us and I'm glad people are doing those sorts of things, and those sorts of things work out because they're just saying what I kind of thought all along,'' he said, laughing.
For nearly 25 years, the band's core members — guitarist/singer Buzz Osborne and drummer Crover — have been making left-of-center metal, mixing their teenage love of punk and hard-core with the slower tempos of bands such as '80s punk pioneers Flipper. The band also has a skewed sense of humor that manifests itself in records such as the still divisive (among the fan base) and experimental Prick, which featured few actual songs.
In concert, the band was known for purposely playing slow sludge metal sets in front of angry punk crowds, and uptempo punk and hardcore in front sets to equally angry headbanging longhairs.
Throughout their musical adventures, the band has had a Spinal Tap-like rotating bass spot that has included members of Mudhoney, The Cows, Earth and Shirley Temple Black's daughter Lori Black. The most recent iteration of The Melvins features Osborne, Crover, bassist/vocalist Jared Warren and (extra) drummer Coady Willis, also known for the Melvins-influenced metal trio Big Business, which will open the show.
The latest album, Nude With Boots, is the second with the new rhythm section following 2006's relatively straightforward, hard-rocking (A) Senile Animal. It features a few sonic wrinkles for the band in the form of Osborne and Warren's dual lead vocals and some two- and three-part harmony singing on tunes such as Billy Fish, adding melody to the heavy riffage and thunderous drums. It's a new twist to the familiar Melvins sound, adding Warren's booming voice to Osborne's patented sneer and another layer of powerful drums.
''I try to put together riffs in a way that makes it seem like an interesting record,'' Osborne said. ''I write 99 percent of the material. It gets fleshed out by all of us together, but it's really my thing so those songs would have been similar to that regardless of who was in the band. But you also utilize the tools that are in front of you and use the abilities of the people that you're playing with. I never thought about [harmony] because it wasn't possible. We did a little bit of it, but now it's more full on and I'm very happy about it.''
Nude With Boots begins with the syncopated, Out On the Tiles-like drum intro and riff of the punk-inflected The Kicking Machine and the concise Billy Fish before stretching out with Dog Island, a classic Melvins seven-minute sludge metal epic. Their beloved weird streak pops up in instrumental mutant-metal spaghetti Western theme Dies Iraea and the album-closing It Tastes Better Than the Truth, which features several minutes of a march-time beat with layers of screamed, shouted vocals and seemingly arbitrary noises and effects.
Fun stuff.
The Melvins have outlived many of the record labels that originally released parts of the group's 25-plus album catalog, as well as most of its musical peers. Though it has been an indie stalwart, the band also played the major label game, signing with Atlantic Records during grunge's heyday. That move led to arguably its best known (or at least best promoted) album, 1993's Houdini, ''produced'' by Cobain, although by several accounts he spent most of his time sleeping on a studio couch. The band also toured with Ozzfest at the behest of admirers in the prog-metal group Tool.
''It was horrible, it was a hideous experience,'' Osborne said.
''I thought it was awful, terrible music, badly run, stupid people involved from Ozzy on down, and there wasn't a single thing about that tour I thought was worthwhile or worth anything. Having said that, we did a show where the Ozzfest and the Warped Tour were involved at the same [event] and I can't say that was any better. The music was even more polarized, and I'm not interested in any of that kind of thing and they're certainly not interested in us, so . . . no worries.''
Despite the band's lengthy history, unfriendly attitude toward once-popular music festivals and core of 40-somethings, the crowd at a Melvins show is always a mix of older metalheads who usually stand near the bar, and younger headbangers in front paying fealty.
''Well, I think it's because we've managed to stay current enough and contemporary because we work so hard as far as touring and being out there,'' Osborne said. ''We haven't turned into an oldies act, thank God. If we stopped touring, I think all that stuff would quit pretty quickly.''
Keeping up the busy schedule, the band will co-curate The Nightmare Before Christmas at the 2008 All Tomorrow's Parties Festival in England along with outre vocalist/Fantomas/Tomahawk/ex-Faith No More/co-owner of Melvins current label Ipecac Records, Mike Patton.
The band also recently released the Fantomas/Melvins Big Band DVD and, according to Ipecac Records, will release a massive box set of everything they have done since joining the label in 1999 plus rare, unreleased tracks and super-groovy packaging.
At the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights, fans can expect a 17-song, 75-minute set that will cover much of the Melvins catalog, including some ''greatest hits'' and current Osborne favorites The Kicking Machine and Billy Fish, which could easily make the playlist of adventurous commercial rock stations, if any such thing existed.
''I always thought we should sell millions. But unfortunately, everyone else doesn't think so,'' Osborne said.
''The world is not a right place.''
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
Let's get the standard ''The Melvins are the godfathers of grunge'' stuff out of the way.
Get the full article here.
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