Line #30 Music/Melvins


1	[[quoteright:330:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/melvins_1350.jpeg]]
2
3	The Melvins were started in 1983 in Montesano, UsefulNotes/{{Washington}} by Roger "Buzz" Osborne, Matt Lukin, and Mike Dillard, who all attended the same high school. The band started out by playing a cross of Music/JimiHendrix and Music/{{Cream}} covers along with a few hardcore punk songs. Eventually, Mike Dillard left the group, and the band recruited Dale Crover (who would later play drums on a couple of songs on Music/{{Nirvana}}'s first album ''Music/{{Bleach\|Album}}'') to be on drums. Shortly after that, the group relocated to Dale's parents' house in Aberdeen, and their sound changed considerably with the decision to slow down their music after they heard Side B of Music/BlackFlag's ''My War''. In 1986, the band released their first EP, ''Six Songs'', followed by their debut a year later. The band had a rotating cast of new members, including Creator/ShirleyTemple's daughter Lori "Lorax" Black on bass guitar. The band released a series of albums, splits, and EP's over the next few years that wound up being extremely influential to multiple artists and genres of music; bands like Music/{{Nirvana}}, Music/{{Tool}} (who are personal friends with the band), Music/{{Eyehategod}}, Music/{{Neurosis}}, Music/{{Mastodon}}, and Music/{{Boris}} (who took their name from a Melvins song) cite them as influences.
4
5	Their (major) albums and [=EPs=] include:
6	* ''[[SelfTitledAlbum Melvins]]'' [-(EP; a.k.a. ''Six Songs'')-], 1986
7	* ''Gluey Porch Treatments'', 1987
8	* ''Ozma'', 1989
9	* ''Bullhead'', 1991
10	* ''Eggnog'' [-(EP)-], 1991
11	* ''King Buzzo'' [-(EP)-], 1992
12	* ''Dale Crover'' [-(EP)-], 1992
13	* ''Joe Preston'' [-(EP)-], 1992
14	* ''Lysol'' [-(a.k.a. ''[[SelfTitledAlbum Melvins]]'' or ''Lice-All'')-], 1992
15	* ''Houdini'', 1993
16	* ''Prick'' [-(as [[SdrawkcabName "Snivlem"]])-], 1994
17	* ''Stoner Witch'', 1994
18	* ''Stag'', 1996
19	* ''Honky'', 1997
20	* ''The Maggot'', 1999
21	* ''The Bootlicker'', 1999
22	* ''The Crybaby'', 2000
23	* ''Electroretard'', 2001
24	* ''Hostile Ambient Takeover'', 2002
25	* ''Pigs of the Roman Empire'' [-(collaboration with Lustmord)-], 2004
26	* ''Never Breathe What You Can't See'' [-(collaboration with Music/JelloBiafra)-], 2004
27	* ''(a) Senile Animal'', 2006
28	* ''Nude with Boots'', 2008
29	* ''The Bride Screamed Murder'', 2010
30	* ''Freak Puke'' [-(Melvins Lite)-], 2012
31	* ''Everybody Loves Sausages'', 2013
32	* ''Tres Cabrones'' [-(Melvins 1983)-], 2013
33	* ''Hold It In'', 2014
34	* ''Three Men and a Baby'' [-(collaboration with Mike Kunka from godheadSilo)-], 2016
35	* ''Basses Loaded'', 2016
36	* ''A Walk with Love & Death'', 2017
37	* ''Pinkus Abortion Technician'', 2018
38	* ''Working with God'' [-(Melvins 1983)-], 2021
39	* ''Five Legged Dog'' [-(all-acoustic album)-], 2021
40	* ''Bad Mood Rising'', 2022
41	* ''Tarantula Heart'', 2024
42
43	!! Tropes that apply to the Melvins:
44	* AllLowercaseLetters: almost all of the track titles on ''the maggot''/''bootlicker''/''crybaby'' trilogy are rendered entirely in lower-case, which makes exceptions like "AMAZON" (which directly follows "amazon") and "we all love JUDY" stand out.
45	* BigRockEnding: Parodied by the instrumental "Pick It n' Flick It", where the ''whole song'' is what would normally be considered a big rock ending. Also, "The Talking Horse", being three minutes long, featured less than a minute of actual singing and shouting, and that's in the middle of the track. On this scale, the rest of the song definitely counts as one.
46	* ClusterFBomb: "I Fuck Around", a parody of Music/TheBeachBoys' "I Get Around" with lots of added gratuitous f-bombs. Said to be something they'd started messing around with at soundchecks, then decided to actually record and release:
47	-->I'm getting fucked fucking up and down this fucking street
48	-->I gotta find a fucking place where the fuckheads meet
49	* CoattailRidingRelative: Subverted with Sam Osborne; while it's no secret that he's King Buzzo's nephew, he has never tried to use his uncle's name for personal gain and has only ever played in decidedly underground death metal acts (most notably Funebrarum and Undergang) to begin with.
50	* CoverAlbum: ''Everybody Loves Sausages''. ''Electroretard'' doesn't quite count, but it's about half true {{cover version}}s, half [[RearrangeTheSong rearranged versions]] of their own songs.
51	* CoverVersion: Aside from the aforementioned ''Everybody Loves Sausages'' and half of ''Electroretard'', they've covered Music/HankWilliams, Music/{{KISS}}, Music/ButtholeSurfers, Music/TheGerms, Green River...among others. The Melvins themselves have been covered by Music/{{Mastodon}}, Music/TheDillingerEscapePlan, [[Music/DevinTownsend Strapping Young Lad]], and Music/PigDestroyer...among others, yet again.
52	** Their appearance on a [[CoverAlbum tribute album]] to Music/PinkFloyd's Music/TheWall is notable for pulling a fast one on listeners - what starts out seeming like a straightforward cover version of ''The Wall'''s opening track "In The Flesh" turns out to be a cover of the identically titled {{Music/Blondie\|Band}} song InTheStyleOf Pink Floyd.
53	* DigitalPiracyIsEvil:
54	** The artwork to ''(A) Senile Animal'' includes a parody of the normal FBI anti-piracy warning often found on compact discs:
55	-->FBI Anti Piracy Warning: Unauthorized Copying is punishable under federal law. So don't do it or the FBI will come and get you and then your life will be ruined and it won't be anyone's fault but your own so don't go trying to blame someone else for your reckless disregard for the legal system. Your sense of entitlement is astonishing and it will inevitably be your downfall if you don't grow up and take responsibility for your actions.
56	** The CD edition of ''The Maggot'' splits every song into two tracks - rumor has it that this was meant to troll would-be pirates by causing them to inadvertently only download half a song. As with above, it and the other "trilogy" albums also include parodies of the normal anti-piracy warning:
57	-->(''The Maggot'') Unauthorized duplication is illegal, you cheap-assed bastards.
58	-->(''The Bootlicker'') Unauthorized duplication is illegal, you small type reading pinhead.
59	-->(''The Crybaby'') Unauthorized duplication is totally illegal, so don't even think about it.
60	* DistinctDoubleAlbum: ''A Walk with Love & Death'': The ''Death'' disc is meant to be a relatively standard Melvins-style rock album. The ''Love'' disc is the soundtrack to a short film (also titled ''A Walk with Love & Death'') and is a mix of sound collage and pure noise.
61	* DoomMetal: The TropeCodifier of the sludge metal subgenre. They also dabbled with stoner metal and standard doom metal itself.
62	* EpicRocking: The average length of a Melvins song is roughly two to five minutes (depending on the album), however there are some that exceed this. ''Bullhead'' contains the eight-and-a-half-minute "Boris", ''Hostile Ambient Takeover'' has the sixteen-minute "Anti-Vermin Seed", ''Lysol'' brings forth "Hung Bunny" and "Roman Dog Bird", SiameseTwinSongs of about eleven and seven and a half minutes, respectively (or on CD editions of the album, the entire 31-minute album as one track), ''Pigs of the Roman Empire'' has the 22-and-a-half-minute TitleTrack, and the live album ''Colossus of Destiny'' is an hour-long noise jam leading into the song "Eye Flys" from their first album (which is itself a six-and-a-half-minute track).
63	* ExpoSpeakGag: The demo compilation ''Mangled Demos from 1983'' includes a track titled "Bibulous Confabulation During Rehearsal": it's five minutes of StudioChatter, and "bibulous confabulation" can in fact be boiled down to "drunken chatter".
64	* GenreRoulette: Don't expect any one release to be the same as the other, even within the same release itself. You might get their signature slow metal, then suddenly get avant-garde noise rock out of nowhere.
65	* AGoodNameForARockBand: The name came from Osborne's days as a clerk at a Montesano-area Thriftway, where "Melvin" was a particularly hated supervisor who was apparently arrested at some point for stealing Christmas trees. Everyone thought that it was an appropriately ridiculous name for the music they were making, and so it stuck.
66	* GreatestHitsAlbum: ''Melvinmania: Best of the [[Creator/AtlanticRecords Atlantic]] Years 1993–1996'', a UK-only compilation that featured a handful of songs each from the albums ''Houdini'', ''Stoner Witch'', and ''Stag'', and was released without the band's involvement. A more extensive, band-selected "Best Of" was included as a companion piece to the art-book ''Neither Here nor There''.
67	* FemaleRockersPlayBass: Usually an all-male band, but they briefly had a female bassist in Lori Black.
68	* HiddenTrack: ''The Maggot'', ''The Bootlicker'' and ''The Crybaby'' were meant to form a loose trilogy, so the former two had a snippet of the first song on the next album in the series hidden after the last song. ''The Crybaby'' included a snippet of "amazon", the first track on ''The Maggot'' instead, which sort of gives {{Bookends}} to these three albums.
69	* IndecipherableLyrics: Several songs, "Roman Dog Bird" being the most notable with at least three different versions of the lyrics floating around out there.
70	* InNameOnly: The cover of "Venus in Furs" by Music/VelvetUnderground. It plays part of the first line, and then suddenly turns into 3 and a half minutes of incoherent cacophony.
71	--> Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leathAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
72	** "Heathen Earth", from the CoverAlbum ''Everybody Loves Sausages'', is credited as a Music/ThrobbingGristle cover - Throbbing Gristle have an album called ''Heathen Earth'', but it doesn't have a TitleTrack (nor did they ever release a song of that title), and "Heathen Earth" seems to actually be an original Melvins piece InTheStyleOf Throbbing Gristle.
73	* IdiosyncraticCoverArt: ''The Maggot'', ''The Bootlicker'', and ''The Crybaby'' all have very similar cover designs, which again relates to the band considering them a "trilogy:": They all have close-ups of different kinds of flowers as a cover image, the band name and title are rendered in the same fonts and appear in the same place, and above the "v" in "Melvins" is a grey circle with a number (1-3) inside it. And then there's the Music/{{KISS}}-homaging artwork of their 1992 solo [=EPs=]. In general, the CD editions of many Melvins albums [[note]]most of the ones released or reissued on Ipecac Recordings[[/note]] have the quirk of placing the track-list, UPC, and copyright information on the front of the booklet, and the proper "cover art" on the back of the case, instead of the other way around as is usual: This allows for a slightly wider cover image.
74	* LuckyCharmsTitle: The demo collection ''Mangled Demos from 1983'' includes tracks with titles like "☘" and "✈" alongside more conventionally named songs. It's possible the band forgot the names of these long-forgotten songs or just never settled on proper names for them to begin with. There's also the song "HOW [=--++--=]" off of ''Honky''.
75	* MisplacedNamesPoster: Early pressings of ''Gluey Porch Treatments'' mixed up the band members' names on the back cover photo.
76	* NewSoundAlbum: The Melvins have never stuck to one particular sound, experimenting with sounds that could qualified as stoner metal, drone metal, avant-garde, and just straight-up punk rock.
77	** ''The Bootlicker'' has the gimmick of eschewing distorted guitars for an entire album, which brings out more of a PsychedelicRock feel - some critics even compared the album to funk or jazz due to the more prominent use of bass guitar.
78	* RemixAlbum: ''Chicken Switch''. Whereas most albums of this type include remixes of individual songs, in this case the band let remixers use entire albums, with generally chaotic, avant-garde results.
79	* RepetitiveAudioGlitch: "Pearl Bomb" starts with 30 seconds of what sounds like a skipping CD. Then this loop is joined by clearly non-glitching bass and vocals, and essentially functions as the rhythm track for the song.
80	* RevolvingDoorBand: The Melvins never had the same bassist for too long. Throughout their four-decade lifespan, they went through more than a dozen bassists. While they have a stable drummer in Dale Crover, he was briefly preceded by Mike Dillard, and he used to share drumming duties with Coady Willis for a couple years.
81	* SelfTitledAlbum: Sort of. ''Lysol'' was originally going to just be called ''Lysol'', but as it turns out, the name was [[MediaNotes/{{Trademark}} a registered trademark]], so the album was recalled and black ink or electric tape covered the offending word, and the album was made a self-titled album. Originally, fans could peel off the tape or rub off the ink, however doing this now would only damage the record. A 2014 vinyl reissue re-titled the album as ''Lice-All'', which is of course pronounced exactly the same as the original title.
82	* SesameStreetCred: They voiced themselves in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa.''
83	* SdrawkcabName: The band wanted to release ''Prick'' on one record label ([=AmRep=]) while signed to another one (Creator/{{Atlantic\|Records}}). The latter label had the rights to their name at the time, so the band name was rendered in mirrored writing (i.e. "Snivlem") wherever it appeared on the artwork.
84	* ShoutOut:
85	** "GGIIBBYY" is named after Music/ButtholeSurfers vocalist Gibby Haynes.
86	** "The Brain Center at Whipple's" is named for [[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E33TheBrainCenterAtWhipples an episode]] of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959''.
87	** In 1992, the then-current members of the band (Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover, and Joe Preston) put out one solo [=EP=] each, largely as an elaborate reference to Music/{{KISS}} having done the same thing in 1978, but with full albums. Like those KISS albums, each EP was released under the band's name, with the member whose solo effort it was serving as the title. The artwork to each EP also featured an airbrushed portrait of a Melvins member, done in the same style of the [=Kiss=] releases, and the band's logo was changed to one that parodied that of KISS. Some non-KISS shout-outs on those releases also occurred in the form of {{Credits Gag}}s: ''King Buzzo'' credits Dale Nixon on bass, after the pseudonym Greg Ginn used for playing bass on Music/BlackFlag's ''My War''. ''Joe Preston'' credits Marina Sirtis with "counseling", as a reference to the actress who portrayed Counselor Deanna Troi in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''.
88	** The title of "Jew Boy Flower Head" is a pun on the Didjits' "Killboy Powerhead"
89	** "Buck Owens" is named after [[Music/BuckOwens the country musician]], though it's a NonAppearingTitle and the song otherwise has nothing to do with him.
90	** The song title "Snake Appeal" is most likely a pun on Music/TheStooges' "Shake Appeal".
91	** The title of "Phylis Dillard" [''sic''] combines the names of actress/comedian Phyllis Diller and their first drummer Mike Dillard.
92	** ''Pinkus Abortion Technician'' is a pun on the Music/ButtholeSurfers album ''Locust Abortion Technician'', combining the title with the last name of Butthole Surfers bassist Jeff Pinkus. The cover art is also a parody of the Butthole Surfers album artwork - ''Locust Abortion Technician'' had a painting of a clown wagging his finger in the face of a dog on the cover, while ''Pinkus Abortion Technician'' has a cruder drawing of that same dog with a bloody severed finger in its mouth. Fittingly, Pinkus plays on the album, and it's [[BookEnds bookended]] with {{Cover Version}}s of Butthole Surfers songs.
93	** ''Electroretard'' includes a special thanks to "A. Hilter" - WordOfGod is it's a reference to a Creator/MontyPython sketch where Adolf Hitler was living in Somerset, England, wearing a fairly transparent disguise and going by the name of "Mr. Hilter".
94	* SilenceIsGolden: "Pure Digital Silence" from ''Prick'' is, aside from a brief intro by Mark Deutrom in a fake British accent, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin precisely that]] - about a minute and a half of pure... digital... silence.
95	* SilverFox: Buzz Osborne in recent years (as seen in the photo above).
96	* SpokenWordInMusic:
97	** "Divorced", a collaboration with Music/{{Tool}}, features a phone conversation between Danny Carey and Maynard James Keenan, which is apparently regarding a mutual friend going out with a woman who Maynard describes as having "a voice like a fuckin' modem, dude!" - Maynard then does his impression of her. The song also includes some singing, albeit with IndecipherableLyrics.
98	** "Hog Leg" begins with some nonsensically {{quote mine}}d samples from a record of Pat Robertson sermons (e.g. "We can go to church, and you're naked", "Christians... are commanded... alcohol... is good").
99	** "Dry Drunk" has a bit of scripted dialogue between members of the band Godzik Pink as a transition between the main section of the song and an instrumental interlude - this includes someone {{corpsing}} and having to start over again.
100	* StepUpToTheMicrophone: Being a solo [=EP=], ''Dale Crover'' has all vocals performed by Dale Crover. Crover also sings "Cottonmouth" from ''Stag''. ''Hold It In'' has Paul Leary and Jeff Pinkus of Music/ButtholeSurfers sing lead on three songs each: Pinkus on "Bride of Crankenstein", "Nine Yards", and "Piss Pistofferson" and Leary on "You Can Make Me Wait", "Eyes on You", and "I Get Along (Hollow Moon)". This can be difficult to discern on "Bride of Crankenstein" because Jeff Pinkus seems to be imitating Buzz.
101	* SurprisinglyGentleSong: They've done relatively sedate covers of [[Music/HankWilliams "Ramblin' Man"]], [[Music/MerleHaggard "Okie from Muskogee"]], [[{{Music/Queen}} "You're My Best Friend"]], and the traditional Canadian folk song "Peggy Gordon". For originals, there's "Black Bock", a lightly psychedelic folk-rock song [[LyricalDissonance about mutilating a goat]], and "You Can Make Me Wait", a surprising experiment in JanglePop with the vocals heavily processed through a vocoder.
102	* SurrealMusicVideo: Pretty much every video they've released to some extent. But "The Talking Horse" stands out for having a MindScrew plot that spoofs multiple conspiracy theories, as well as for being an [[TheInvisibleBand invisible band]] video where inanimate objects lip sync.
103	* StealthInsult: Sort of. Their name comes from a person that Buzz worked with named Melvin that nobody liked; he considered the name to be so stupid, he named his band that as another form of insulting him.
104	* TakeThat: "Laughing with Lucifer at Satan's Sideshow" uses SpokenWordInMusic to satirize the less-than-cordial relations the band had with their former label.
105	* TheTheTitleConfusion: "Melvins" vs. "The Melvins". The band usually uses the former, but haven't always been consistent about it... And their two albums where they collaborated with Music/JelloBiafra are officially by Jello Biafra with ''the'' Melvins, probably because it flows better as an artist name. The confusion is referenced in the cover art to ''A Senile Animal'', which renders the band name as "(the) Melvins" and the album as "(a) Senile Animal"... And the cover of ''Tres Cabrones'' bills them as "Los Melvins" to go with the GratuitousSpanish title.
106	* TitlePlease: A rare non-television example: ''Lysol'' doesn't list its tracks on any official version of the album (not helped by the whole thing being mastered as one track on CD releases)--only a test pressing of the LP version gave away the track titles (albeit lumping both [[Music/AliceCooper "Second Coming" and "Ballad of Dwight Fry"]] under the latter name).
107	* UnpluggedVersion: ''Five Legged Dog'' is mainly acoustic versions of previously electric songs, though they generally don't make the arrangements any softer or slower.
108	* WildHair: The signature look of Buzz Osborne - he's the one in the top right of the page image. A common joke among the fanbase (especially on Website/YouTube) is that he [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons "looks like Sideshow Bob and laughs like Krusty the Clown"]]. Possibly also the reason the whole band are depicted as off-brand [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_doll Troll dolls]] in the AnimatedMusicVideo for "Electric Flower".
109	* WordSaladLyrics: If it makes even a lick of sense, chances are it's a cover. Sometimes goes far enough to be considered SpeakingSimlish, most prominently in "Hooch", the opening track of ''Houdini'', and the only song on the album to have its "lyrics" printed. It wasn't left unnoticed: the music video of the said song was featured in ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'', where Butt-Head tried to figure out the lyrics for Beavis. For reference, here's the first "verse" of the song, taken straight from the booklet.
110	--> "Los ticka toe rest. Might likea sender doe ree\
111	Your make a doll a ray day sender bright like a penelty\
112	Exi-tease my ray day member half lost a beat away\
113	Purst in like a one way sender war give a heart like a fay"

Context Music / Melvins