“We have always planted our flag somewhere else and people have come to it. “I have never been a follower, and we have never wanted to be a part of what’s popular at the time, or any trends,” Osborne says. Still, the group never embraced any stylistic affiliation with grunge. According to Osborne, though, Cobain was fired because he couldn’t do the job due to issues related to drug abuse. Crover played drums on some songs from Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, and the Melvins even famously worked with Kurt Cobain to produce Houdini. The group’s formative years coincided with the rise of Seattle’s grunge rock scene in the early ‘90s, culminating in the murk and overdriven guitar rock of early albums by Tad, Mudhoney and Nirvana. Dog is Totally Right,” is a massive and plodding opus that distills much of the group’s legacy into a nearly 13-minute metallic onslaught. One song they’re playing from Bad Mood Rising, titled “Mr. With each new album, the Melvins summon an ambiance that falls somewhere between confrontation and meditation, draped in layers of fuzzed-out distortion, hypnotic rhythms, staccato percussion and menacing weirdness that is as tense as it is uncompromising. Live, the Melvins have a reputation for delivering colossal performances, bridging the sludgy early material with the more evolved songwriting of (A) Senile Animal (2006) and Nude With Boots (2008), both featuring Coady Willis and Jared Warren of Big Business. “He goes all out every night, and he’s always the one who’s happiest to be there on the stage,” Crover laughs. Juxtaposed with Osbourne and Crover’s stoic presence, he adds an element of excitement to the Melvins slow roar, and he backs it all up with a monster sound that’s tailor-made to boost the group’s surly dirges. On stage, McDonald swerves and swaggers, reaching for the heavens in a series of rock god maneuvers. Current bass player Steven McDonald of Los Angeles punk and power pop band Redd Kross joined the Melvins in 2015, following a long line of bass players ranging from avant-garde jazz/rock figure Trevor Dunn to JD Pinkus of the Butthole Surfers. Since the group formed in rural Montesano, WA in 1983, singer and guitar player “King Buzzo” Buzz Osborne has remained consistently at the helm for an ever-growing body of work that evokes a sludgy and ecstatic head-nodding state of mind.Ĭrover joined the band in 1984. The new album in question is Bad Mood Rising (Amphetamine Reptile), a six-song full-length that finds the group returning to the melodic, demonic punk metal molasses that defined such early ‘90s classic albums as Bullhead (‘91), Lysol (‘92) and Houdini (‘93). “The meat of it will be there, along with a few things we haven’t played in years, and at least two songs from the new album.” We’ll also play stuff from the second and third records, probably not from the first record, but as soon as I say that here, the setlist will change to include something from that album,” he laughs. “There will be stuff that we always play during our live shows. “We try to cover as much as we can,” Crover says. Following suit, this latest round of shows functions as something of a greatest hits tour, but drummer Dale Crover hesitates to call it that. The “Five Legged Tour” is so named after the group’s massive 2021 collection, Five Legged Dog (Ipecac), featuring acoustic renditions of some of the most popular songs, cherry picked from throughout the Melvins catalog. But why wait until then to observe the group’s entire legacy (so far)? In March of 2023, the Melvins will celebrate the 40th anniversary of playing its first live show.
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