Heavy music mavericks Melvins bring co-headlining tour with Napalm Death to Bay Area
A groundbreaking heavy rock band that has shaped the sound of punk and metal for over 40 years, the Melvins bring their current tour with UK grindcore greats Napalm Death to San Francisco and San Jose.
Over the course of a more than four decade career playing by their own rules, guitarist/singer Buzz Osborne and monster drummer Dale Crover have co-piloted their seminal underground rock band the Melvins through a wildly diverse exploration of heavy music. Inspired by the slow tempos and down-tuned guitar sludge of Black Sabbath as well as the dissonance of punk iconoclasts Flipper and My War-era Black Flag, the Melvins became legends in Washington State during their formative years in the early-to-mid 1980s after being founded in the small town of Montesano.
The band's combination of crushing riffs and lumbering grooves would end up influencing the entire Northwest music scene. Aberdeen natives and early fans Kurt Cobain (who at one point auditioned for the band) and Krist Novoselic were inspired to form Nirvana, while fellow grunge heavyweights like Alice In Chains and Soundgarden similarly updated the Sabbath template. The Melvins have been credited as a cornerstone inspiration for a number of heavy rock subgenres, providing the template for stoner-rock bands and experimental drone terrorists alike.
With a revolving cast of bassists, the Melvins have produced a veritable landslide of experimentally minded releases that have consistently pushed the envelope of alternative rock. Whether recording for major label Atlantic during the early '90s or issuing discs on numerous independent imprints, the group has forged a singular, instantly recognizable sound without ever being afraid to make major experimental detours. The band also received piles of critical accolades for their collaboration with equally heavy duo Big Business featuring bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis with the celebrated effort (A) Senile Animal in 2006.
Powered by a massive two-drummer onslaught (the two players used a huge overlapping kit that shared some drums), that album and follow-up recordings Nude with Boots and The Bride Screamed Murder showcased Osborne's twisted, tuneful riffs and some of the band's catchiest output yet. The group would also branch out with other collaborators, partnering with noted avant-rock bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, John Zorn and a bandmate of Osborne's in Fantomas) on the "Melvins Lite" album Freak Puke in 2012 with an accompanying record-breaking tour that had the trio playing 50 states and Washington, D.C. in 51 days with Dunn sticking exclusively to acoustic bass. They also reunited with original drummer Mike Dillard (with Crover switching to bass), issued a guest-packed collection of cover songs (Everybody Loves Sausages in 2013) and recorded with Butthole Surfers members Paul Leary and bassist J.D. Pinkus (who had already served as a frequent touring member of the band).
In 2016, the group managed to further ramp up its already prolific output. In addition to Sub Pop issuing a set of long-shelved recordings with godheadSilo bassist Mike Kunka that were recorded back in the late '90s (credited to Mike and the Melvins and entitled Three Men and a Baby), the band toured extensively with latest bass-playing recruit Steven McDonald of Redd Kross and OFF! fame to promote their another more recent release. The Ipecac Records effort Basses Loaded featured newer material recorded with McDonald as well as songs featuring a variety of recent bassists and a guest spot from Novoselic himself.
In addition playing some shows in conjunction with screenings of the documentary The Colossus of Destiny: A Melvins Tale by co-directors Bob Hannam and Ryan Sutherby, the band members also found the time to collaborate with with singer Terri Genderbender (Le Butcherettes) and Omar Rodríguez-López (The Mars Volta, At the Drive-In) in the new group Crystal Fairy for an eponymous effort on Ipecac as well as recording their first double album, A Walk With Love and Death.
The 2017 collection matched an album's worth of more traditional Melvins material with a second set of experimental recordings that serve as the score to an avant-garde short film entitled Love made by band friend and director Jesse Nieminen. Crover also released his solo debut The Fickle Finger of Fate via Joyful Noise Recordings. While he had already made a number of albums as the leader of his side project band Altamont, the effort gave Crover a chance to stretch out on everything from drum experiments to fractured pop tunes.
The Melvins presented a new mutant version of the band with its 2018 album Pinkus Abortion Technician that features both Pinkus and McDonald playing bass. A rare exception to Melvins releases that are usually dominated by songs written by Osborne, the new effort includes a couple of reworked Butthole Surfers songs (including a twisted mash-up of the R&B/rock standard "Stop" with the Surfers song "Moving to Florida"), a warped cover of the Beatles' standard "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and a mix of originals penned by Crover, Pinkus and McDonald.
The Melvins faced the downtime without touring during the pandemic by ramping up their work in the studio that came out in 2021. In addition to releasing a new effort Working With God that featured the 1983 version of the group reuniting again, the trio also issued Five-Legged Dog, a sprawling double disc acoustic collection with new recordings of songs from throughout the band's career as well as some new and reimagined covers of tunes by the Rolling Stones, Harry Nilsson, the Turtles and Alice Cooper.
While the December surge of COVID forced the band to cancel a pair of San Francisco shows that would have included a New Year's Eve concert, the Melvins returned to the road in 2022, joining Ministry and openers Corrosion of Conformity on a tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of the landmark The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste album. The band also issued the first of the new recordings it made during the shutdown, releasing the limited Lord of the Flies EP with two new songs and a pair of covers (a version of Soundgarden's "Spoonman" featuring Matt Cameron on drums and a mash-up of Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop" and Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge") ahead of Bad Mood Rising, the effort released that fall featuring all new original music spotlighting more of Osborne's idiosyncratic songwriting and monolithic riffs.
A health scare in 2023 led to emergency spinal surgery for Crover, which forced him to sit out a co-headlining tour with Japanese heavy experimentalists Boris (Willis returned to the group to fill in) as well as the recording of the latest Redd Kross album -- a stellar self-titled double album released last summer. However, Crover recovered enough to play on Tarantula Heart, which once again utilized a two-drummer line-up, this time pairing him with Roy Mayorga (best known as a member of metal bands Soulfly and Stone Sour, currently in Ministry). More recently, Osborne and Dillard reunited for another Melvins 1983 album, this time recorded with contributions from electronic artists Void Manes and Ni Maîtres. The band's latest collaborative experiment teamed the group with Napalm Death ahead of the two bands' "Imperial Death March Part II" Tour that will travel across the U.S. for 52 shows before heading to Europe in the summer. The Melvins also embarked on a brief West Coast tour in March to welcome Willis back into the fold, bringing the band's two-drummer onslaught back to the stage.
Co-headliners Napalm Death have led a similarly iconoclastic path as a pioneering grindcore band in the UK that was among the first to mix elements of crust punk, metal and industrial noise with such extreme results. The band was founded in a small West Midlands village in 1981 by teens Nic Bullen (bass/vocals) and Miles Ratledge (drums) as a politically charged anarcho-punk band. The group went through several line-up changes and an extended hiatus before re-emerging with a more varied sound in 1985 thanks to the addition of guitarist Justin Broadrick, who Bullen had already worked with in dark ambient/power electronic project Final.
Drawing on the menacing post-punk of Killing Joke, blistering British hardcore punks Discharge and proto death-metal bands Celtic Frost and the Bay Area's own Possessed, the band would move in an even more extreme direction following the departure of Ratledge and the addition of his replacement Mick Harris on drums. Released in 1987, Napalm Death's proper debut Scum was groundbreaking in its use of high-velocity tempos, blastbeat drums and guttural vocals that pushed the boundaries of punk and metal. The A side featured the trio of Bullen, Broadrick and Harris, but the Harris-led B side included a completely new version of the band with 16-year-old guitarist Bill Steer, bassist Jim Whitley and new singer Lee Dorian.
The follow-up album From Enslavement to Obliteration and subsequent EP Mentally Murdered would mark the final recordings with Steer and Dorian, who went their separate ways with Steer co-founding influential British death metal band Carcass and the singer starting doom metal band Cathedral. Those recordings were also the first to feature new bassist Shane Embry, who has been the sole constant in the decades since.
Napalm Death's 1990 album Harmony Corruption shifted the band's sound in a more death metal direction with the addition of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway and guitarists Mitch Harris and Jesse Pintado. Harris left the band the following year to pursue the extreme experimental band Painkiller with saxophonist John Zorn and bassist Bill Laswell and other projects. Meanwhile, the group brought on new drummer Danny Herrera, establishing Napalm Death's most stable line-up that would continue until Pintado's departure in 2004. While the band has toured consistently and remains a cult favorite among grindcore and death metal fans, its album releases have become more sporadic. Its most recent, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism in 2020, was praised by many as their best work in ages. The tour makes two Bay Area stops, hitting the Great American Music Hall for a sold-out show Monday before heading south to San Jose to play the Ritz Tuesday. Sludgy stoner-metal favorites Weedeater -- featuring onetime Buzzov*en bassist "Dixie Dave" Collins -- and Embry's ambient project Dark Sky Burial also perform.
Melvins and Napalm Death with Weedeater and Dark Sky Burial
Monday, April 7, 6 p.m. $37.50 (sold out)
Great American Music Hall
Tuesday, April 8, 7 p.m. $30-$38 (sold out)
The Ritz
