Brace yourself, Baltimore. This Thursday, July 2, the legendary Melvins will return to our fair city to play a show at the Ottobar, joined by the psycho-garage-punks Le Butcherettes from Mexico. The sludgy three-piece, consisting of Buzz “King Buzzo” Osborne (guitar and vocals), Dale Crover (drums and vocals), and the Butthole Surfers’ Jeff Pinkus (bass and vocals), are sure to deliver a much needed dose of face-melting, gut-busting, mind-bending live music.
Sonically stimulating, delightfully deranged, sardonically silly, devastatingly heavy, intrepidly experimental, remarkably illustrious—to reduce the Melvins to words is a lost cause. Their sound is too immense and too diverse to encapsulate in language. Even Buzzo’s own description of the band’s sound is difficult to wrap your mind around: “We’re George Clinton crossed with Captain Beefheart crossed with Lenny Bruce playing heavy metal.”
The Melvins are truly in a league of their own. Their impact on modern music is palpable, having pioneered their own brand of heavy metal and influenced countless musical acts including Acid Bath, Baroness, Boris, Clutch, Crowbar, Eyehategod, Mastodon, Neurosis, Pig Destroyer, Soundgarden, Tool, and their opening act, Le Butcherettes. They even played a fundamental role in the music of Nirvana; Crover played for Nirvana while they were in between drummers, and the Melvins facilitated Dave Grohl’s introduction to Kurt.
In three decades the Melvins went from a couple guys practicing in a back room at one of their parent’s houses in Washington State to straight-up Legend Status. How they did it, I can’t say, but one thing is certain: since their inception, the Melvins have been relentlessly pushing the boundaries of music, constantly evolving their sound, releasing more albums than I care to count and touring extensively, making them one of the most eclectic and hard-working groups in show business. If you haven’t heard them yet, what better time to start than now?
The upcoming Ottobar show will be their latest stop on their Hold It In Tour in support of their 2014 album Hold It In and the this year’s reissue of two Melvins’ albums in one package, The Bulls & The Bees (2012) and Electroretard (2001). Hold It In, featuring the Butthole Surfers’ Paul Leary on guitar and Jeff Pinkus on bass, demonstrates the group’s continuous musical progression. The album has a diverse set of songs and sounds, ranging from hypnotic psychedelia to bluesy jams, blistering punk to slimy stoner ballads, ambient arrangements to schizophrenic breakdowns, poppy tunes to dirty dirges, gritty garage rock to bone-crunching, brutally heavy riffage, with plenty of head-spinning guitar solos along the way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAiHU2dxcxg
While I recommend diving into the Melvins’ seemingly endless discography, nothing compares to the sludgy raw power of their live performances. What better Baltimore venue than the Ottobar to host the Melvins while they are in town? Whether you have been a Melvins’ fan for years or haven’t listened to them a day in your life, this Thursday’s show is one that you won’t want to miss.
You can get tickets online from missontix.com, or, if you want to avoid the downright criminal “service charges,” swing by Charmington’s Cafe or the Ottobar for your ticket purchasing needs.
