If you aren’t familiar with Washington’s sludge/punk/drone/rock legends (the) Melvins, there’s the door. Get out. Still here? Good, because their massively influential, thirty year plus career has seen them gain a sizeable, stoic fanbase the world over. That they can sell out the Electric Ballroom, Camden and still deign to play a considerably smaller show in Reading’s Sub 89 speaks volumes of the bands mentality – they don’t care who or where you are, they’re bringing it to you.
First up are ballsy Seattle based bruisers Big Business. The ‘power duo’ of drummer Coady Willis and bassist/vocalist Jared Warren throw down walls of sludge-tinged stoner rock riffs to a steadily increasing audience. Cuts like ‘Chump Chance’ are tribal and pounding, but fail to elicit the desired response from a slightly sleepy Thursday night crowd. After some tongue in cheek chastisement from Warren, things relax a little, and he continues to belt out tracks old and new with his husky, righteously powerful vocals. Willis is an absolute percussive powerhouse behind the kit, a mix of wiry fury and intuitive technical skill. Warren seems increasingly miffed by the less than attentive security, startling one by looming over him while nailing down a bass line, and grabbing at the phone of another before marching across the stage. He gives them a stern telling off for not doing their jobs, and thus not allowing the band to do theirs, before using this vitriol to boost the last few numbers in their set. ‘Lonely Lyle’ reverberates through the venue – a huge, towering churner of a track. They leave the stage having no doubt earned some new devotees.
Warren and Willis return to the stage as 50% of The Melvins, as they have done on previous tours and records, arguably two of the more constant fixtures of the band’s trademark revolving lineup. The room is packed, anticipation erupting into a heroes welcome for Buzz Osbourne (clad in a magnificently odd eye-embroidered ceremonial robe) and Dale Crover. The band waste no time in smashing everyone in the face with the blunt end of ‘Onions Make The Milk Taste Bad’, and from then on it’s a breathless, relentless, but joyous assault on the senses. Buzz canes it around the stage, his frantic movement (and gravity defying ‘fro) buoying up the crowd. There’s no banter, no mid song pauses, and there don’t fucking need to be.
With so, so many releases to cherry pick tracks from, only the most obsessive, devout Melvins aficionados will have heard all the songs in the set list, but the band seem to be leaning on the heavier material tonight (despite an absence of anything from Houdini) – ‘Evil New War God’ is a brick shithouse of a tune, and newer cuts like ‘Bride Of Crankenstein’ sound just as raw and furious as old standards like ‘Sweet Willy Roll Bar’ and ‘At The Stake’. Every track is executed with merciless, road-tested precision; Warren and Buzz wring every imaginable variety of riff from their fretboards and the backline of Willis and Crover pound out tribal, militaristic and funky lines like their kits owe them two months rent. There’s such stylistic variety in what the band throw down that you could potentially bring any one, regardless of musical tastes, to a Melvins show and they’d still be blown away.
The sound mix is near perfection, like a physical entity; Warren and Osbourne’s vocals ring through lound and clear, each chord vibrates all of your molecules out of place, and each colossal kick hit or sharp, clattering snare strike quiver them right back in again. It’s like the PA is wired directly into your brain stem. We pity those who didn’t bring ear plugs. Crover and Willis duel away, bouncing fills and solos off one another, and it’s beyond belief that Willis can play two such physically demanding sets effortlessly, almost back to back. ‘The Bit’ is majestic, and as it washes over you you realise; this is like watching a concert, like witnessing art, flawless, living and breathing and right fucking now. As Warren surfs into the sweaty crowd, borne aloft by what was seconds before the happiest mosh pit ever, howling out the last refrain to ‘A History Of Bad Men’, the mind truly boggles at how these guys can play with this intensity, with this much heart night after night, year after year, to the same blistering standard.
We hand out a fair amount of high scoring for live reviews on MOSH, but tonight The Melvins’ kick the concept of giving them a numeric value, of quantifying their worth, straight into the fucking sun. There’s no argument. Long. Live. Melvins.
