THE MELVINS?

King Buzz, is that your name? Listen mate, I don’t like Metal or whatever it is called. I will admit that I like you, King Buzz. Your voice is like slow plastic burning in a fast Hell. I don’t know what to say, what is the deal with your drummer? This chap basically makes the band. Your lyrics are so underrated Mr. Buzz, sir. I can’t stand these grooves, I am just forced to shake the bottom. Why would stoners need to be stoned when your music blows their mind from here to Hawaii? This is the real stuff, so carefully put together, yet so loose that one could conveniently move their respective bowels to it in no time at all!

I don’t mean to talk in a roundabout way, and this is no love letter to a band that I know so little about, and against my better judgment, I am totally tuned into some of your grand works, Master Buzz! The musical quality that unfolds is pure and genuine, and the underline reality is that you are expressing an intense love for music that has been no doubt going strong for decades. Perhaps Melvins fans can clue me into some of their recent output, because I am out of the loop after the major label days of the previous decade. I also enjoy some of the early sludge-ridden strangeness of Gluey Porch Treatments and the like. If all Metal could sound this way, perhaps the genre would be going places or back in its prime, such as in the early days of Sabbath or good old Bon Scott era AC/DC. But I also wonder if the Melvins are perhaps onto something new, and even to this day, because what is it that they do exactly? Some have referred to it as Stoner Rock, perhaps, but the King that is Buzz looks like a rather sober and conservative chap in interviews.

I am left confused by these gentlemen and their bizarre lyrical tirades. It isn’t so much their influence that should be a footnote in the history of Pop, but rather, the inventive and invigorating love they have brought and continue to bring into the Metal genre, a genre that has sadly become a blur of supposedly scary bands or washed up pricks that we are still expected to care about. I am a Classical fan by nature, so I apologize if there is actually some good Metal out there that I am not aware of, but I am aware that Buzz and his band move me oh so intensely. There is nothing like a quality workout and a good old fashioned Melvins tune kicking on the stereo. Anyone for some motherfucking tennis?

Dig these classic tracks, and what treats they must be in a live setting…





Hi!