Melvins
The Melvins were founded in 1984 in Seattle as a punk rock group, named after a fellow who was caught stealing Christmas trees. They now have their own very distinctive sound, which ranges from impossibly ugly metal to frantic psychobilly riffage. The Melvins' sludge was inspirational to the band Nirvana and many other Seattle-area bands, around 1988; the younger bands took the Black Sabbath-styled heaviness of the Melvins and added an important dose of pop song structure, which the group tended to lack.
While all of their disciples became famous after Nirvana broke big in 1991 (including Mudhoney, who featured former Melvins bassist, Matt Lukin), the Melvins only expanded their cult slightly. In addition to their Melvins activities, Buzz Osborne joined Mike Patton (and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn) for the experimental outfit Fantômas, resulting in a pair of releases thus far (1999's Fantômas debut and 2001's The Director's Cut), while the Melvins' latest bassist, Kevin Rutmanis, joined Mike Patton in another side project, Tomahawk.
In 2004, the Melvins toured to celebrate their 20th anniversary, and also released their art book Neither Here Nor There. The book is a collection of art by creators of their cover art as well as friends of the band, and also contained retrospectives on the past twenty years of the Melvins. The book also included a CD with a selected tracks from their albums.
More recently, the Melvins were a major inspiration to the appropriately-labelled "sludge metal" scene of New Orleans.
Back
to Grunge Music - History
You are visitor:
