MELVINS - Buzz Osborne on acoustic covers, NIRVANA & Napalm Death

Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne chats about the band's new 36-track acoustic album, Five Legged Dog, how he influenced Nirvana and Soundgarden and how he feels Napalm Death are a performance art project, not a metal band.
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Where to begin with a new Melvins release? August 24, in the year 79 A.D. seems as good a place as any. On this day, citizens of Pompeii emerged squinting from their villas, fell knee-bound and, drawing panicked eyeballs skyward, watched as money shots of glowing lava spewed down upon them, flash-frying bodies in suspended animation. Had the Melvins been there on that fateful day they surely would have scoffed, simply cracked free of their lava encasing, belched out a plume of ash and gone on their merry way, refusing to be frozen - or sticking with the metaphor - burned in an instance of time.
It’s not that the Melvins are timeless, nothing so anodyne or sentimental as that. Their latest offering, the acoustic retrospective, Five Legged Dog, finds the Melvins unstuck in time, the musical version of Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, quantum-vaulting between eras and eardrums. At once going forwards and backwards. Is it mere coincidence the album's epicentre should be a rendering of the Stones’ rocker, “Sway,” with conspicuous keystone lyrics, “Did you ever wake up to find / A day that broke up your mind / Destroyed your notion of circular time….”
Move now from 79 A.D. to 1979 A.D., the catastrophic era of disco denim stuffed with schlong, and continue right up to today. Somewhere between those encrusted epochs of banker-rock, a vein of music materialized where ego and orthodoxy were anathema. Of all the lies here told, this is none of them: The Melvins gave birth to that age. Hardcore punk was the semen and heavy metal the swampy bush of this unholy conception. Both an aesthetic and an ethic are what it takes to define an age. And during a near 40-year shelf-life, the Melvins continue to dazzle, confuse and confound. Five Legged Dog is a four-album beast, a testament to their unmatched work ethic, their penchant for pushing the envelope, then shredding it to bits. Said Melvins founder, Buzz Osborne, “One acoustic record seems like a joke and two is pretty normal, but doing FOUR?!? That’s like going to war against an army of gorillas on LSD.”
Long before Seattle burned under its own pyrocumulonimbus lightning fires there was Osborne and drummer, Dale Crover, from working-class Montesano and Aberdeen respectively. Multiple (trusted) sources confirm that the two met while rat-holing their way into local opium dens, sidling up to mourning widows and desultory loggers on the nod to relieve them of their pocket change. It was by this method that they amassed enough money to rent their first instruments. But their music initially took a back seat to academia when they were both accepted into the prestigious Bushwood Academy of Technology and engrossed themselves in an emerging field of physics known as T-symmetry, the scientific rule that dictates time runs differently backwards than it does forwards. Imagine an oak tree slowly descending into the ground, or a demolished building heaving upward and settling in full pristine form. Though a career in physics was not meant to be, the principle of T-symmetry had a profound effect on them, and out of this, the Melvins and their musical space-time fuckery, was born. And if this ain’t the truth, pardner, then God’s a penguin. ??The Melvins rudder has been their love of other bands, always fans of the good shit. They were unabashedly Kids In Satan's Service. But not just KISS... The Who, Throbbing Gristle, Butthole Surfers, Blondie, Flipper and the unfathomable bathysphere of electroacoustic noise... Melvins loved those bands the way you love your oxygen. And after all this time, they breathe that music still. The more mordant their cover renditions have been, the deeper the Melvins' sound has plumbed, until all familiars are hidden, then resolved as newly slabbed granite so massive that to dismantle it into its separate sources is unimaginable. Few artists work so hard at exceeding limits, fewer still follow absurdity past all reason and yet, mile upon mile Melvins strike fertile soil of sound and conceptual fury. And with this album, Osborne aimed to make a statement. “This a big one. We knew we had to do something massive to prove we weren’t fucking around.”
Buzz Osborne is the iconic wild-haired founder, frontman, and guitarist for the legendary band, Melvins. Melvins are an American rock band formed in 1983, in Montesano, Washington. Their early work was key to the development of both grunge and sludge metal. The band released their 32nd (unofficial number by Buzz's account) studio album, "Working With God", in February of 2021 through Ipecac Recordings.

[@kevmac1230]

He innovated everything.And he'll tell you so.

[@jlfvrs]

LMAO

[@jonvia]

This interview is soaked in sarcasm.

[@skippyhandleman1625]

I think the vocals on Billy Fish are amazing!

[@gilbertpillbrow6978]

Good interview. You asked some decent questions

[@ListenNext]

Thanks Gilbert. Appreciate that.

[@mattdestroyed]

In all the interviews I've seen in him he can never set his camera properly 😂

[@null2470]

Who?

[@ListenNext]

Only the band that inspired Nirvana and Soundgarden. NBD :)

[@sleepingdogpro]

@@ListenNext Multiple bands inspired those folks, the Beatles included, but none of them are bragging about how supposedly important they were. I swear Buzz gets more full of himself with every passing year. He's also claimed Kurt never had any stomach issues because Kurt never told Buzz about it. And Buzz ALSO claimed he painted the graffiti that Kurt got arrested for. Dude should probably be diagnosed for some sort of narcissistic disorder at this point.

[@SteveGerrardPhotography]

@@sleepingdogpro To be fair, he was asked the question about which bands he's proud to be connected to who cite them as an influence.

[@Notion3D]

He's also known as "King Buzzo". Largely regarded as the originator of the sounds and sensibilities that came to be "grunge". Soundgarden, Nirvana, Tool and many other prolific bands' guitarists revere him as one of the greats. Top comment from another video: "To anyone who doesn't know the Melvins... they're your favourite band's favourite band."

[@pinkpiglet71]

@@sleepingdogpro having an opinion about other people having an a opinion and having a problem with it…