At A Crawl

Before we get going, I want to thank everyone who supported Ritual Cross in any way last Friday. I wasn't sure anyone would care about it, much less like it, so I thank you all for the support. Now, onto writing about music that's not my own.

I wasn't expecting my mind to be blown. Frankly, I wasn't sure I was going to feel anything at all. Yet, there I was, completely entranced for those 45 minutes, in a way that was borderline spiritual. Live music—it's a hell of a thing.

If the art at the top of this didn't tip you off already, the band providing me with this overwhelming feeling of connection was the Melvins. Though until two days before the show, I was on the fence as to whether or not I'd even wind up going, and I had my reasons. For one, when Napalm Death and the Melvins teamed up for the first Savage Imperial Death March tour in 2016, those bands were in completely different places, and so was I. Napalm Death had released Apex Predator - Easy Meat, a record I loved both then and now. At that time, I'd yet to see the Melvins live and, though I was not particularly enamored with their then-current releases, they weren't that far removed from releasing music I enjoyed. Plus, the all-time greats Melt-Banana were opening the tour, so those factors made my attendance in 2016 feel mandatory.

Fast forward nine years, and Napalm Death and Melvins were running it back, but things felt decidedly different. Napalm Death's 2020 album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, was good, not great. On top of that, early on in the tour, bassist Shane Embury dropped out due to illness. The lack of Napalm Death's creative center made the whole thing feel a bit off to me, like it was a diluted version of the band. I'm not sure that logic entirely holds water, but it was the feeling I had nonetheless. Worse yet, the Melvins' cold streak had extended to the point where I stopped checking out their new albums entirely before the pandemic hit. The situation got so dire that, despite owning nearly a dozen Melvins records, I rarely played them, as the act reminded me not of the band's elite earlier material, but their past-their-prime present.

Side bar: This is probably a good time to take a detour and explain something about myself. When it comes to art of any form, I value a body of work over isolated acts of greatness. Perhaps it's my collector tendencies, but I prefer following bands, writers, and filmmakers that change, evolve, or sharpen their craft over time. While some people are capable of latching onto a single release by an artist, I need to be in for the whole ride—or at least the vast majority of the ride. When a band falls off the cliff creatively, it's hard for me to square how I could find enjoyment in something that ended up becoming so deeply repellant. I admit, it's not logical, but it's just how I am.

Okay, we're back.

What I didn't realize is how my past few months of listening habits had primed me to have this kind of transcendental moment with the Melvins. Spurred in part by a creeping disillusionment with some of the current trends in scenes I stay tapped into, I found myself reaching for records I hadn't played in years. There's still been new music I've loved—more on that in a future newsletter—but I was craving something that didn't feel so didactic and constrained.

Fittingly, it all started with Black Flag's trio of 1984 releases—My War, Slip It In, and Family Man—and each one hit harder than they ever had before. Yes, even Family Man. Similarly, Black Flag's instrumental album, 1986's The Process of Weeding Out, stopped sounding like some half-formed curiosity. To my yearning ears, I finally heard the vitality in it. Though I've both critiqued and defended the band publicly, the truth is, I was always a fairly passive fan. I liked them in fits and starts, favoring the early, pre-Damaged material and every few years pulling My War off the shelf when the mood struck. Suddenly, this band that had been at arm's length for most of my life finally felt within reach.

This stretch of listening led me to Eyehategod, a band that, similarly, I've always enjoyed but never completely loved. Much like this mid-'80s Black Flag material suddenly connected in profound new ways, the same was true of the New Orleans sludge icons. Part of it was hearing them less as a metal band and more as a slow, groovy hardcore band. I fixated on these bleak, desperate albums for months, spinning them so regularly that I went from moderate enjoyment into all-out devotion. A byproduct of hearing a band doing something that didn't try to please anyone other than themselves, forging a path for themselves and no one else.

If I was someone with so much as three brain cells in my head, I should have anticipated that the Melvins, the literal link between Black Flag and Eyehategod, would have connected with me at this very moment. At a time when I was having these eye-opening listening experiences with other bands, I had a handful of Melvins records sitting several feet away from me, but they'd come to represent something equally as worthy of derision as the paint-by-numbers hardcore bands I see hyped online each week: the Melvins had become a gimmick.

In 2006, when the Melvins consumed the band Big Business, bringing bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis into the Melvins wholesale, they released (A) Senile Animal. To this day, (A) Senile Animal remains in my top five Melvins albums. The ensuing records, Nude With Boots and The Bride Screamed Murder, were lesser versions of this format and, before long, the Melvins seemed creatively spent. Covers albums, records with six different bassists, collaborations with members of other bands, a quadruple LP of acoustic versions of their old songs, albums with their original drummer back; all of these things were novel, sure, but they weren't exactly inspired. Pair this with their prolific release schedule, and it was clear that quality control had gone completely out the door.

To build on that earlier aside: my fandom for anything is conditional. Make no mistake, I am willing to give artists a lot of latitude. I'll follow you for three or four albums of questionable material before I start wondering whether it's even worth my time to check out your new music. The difference is that, where most bands can take anywhere from five to ten years to fully test my loyalty, the Melvins burned me out in 18 months.

Though I assumed my days of even caring about the band were long in the rearview, two days before Savage Imperial Death March II rolled through town, I bought a ticket. Even now, I don't know what pushed me over the edge. The biggest selling point was the Melvins' double-drummer setup. And, with Willis back in the band, a couple of tracks from (A) Senile Animal worked their way back into the set. Even as I bought my ticket, it was with a gnawing feeling in the back of my head that I'd likely leave disappointed. But I had to know for sure.

Standing at Metro, moments before the Melvins went on, I was still expecting their set to be fine. Pretty good, maybe. Something I'd be glad I saw, but not really think about again. However, As soon as they kicked into "Working The Ditch," a newer song I was unfamiliar with, I felt my body locking into their specific rhythms. While Buzz Osborne's vocals can be a bit off-putting when I'm not on his specific wavelength, it's easy enough to get lost in his massive, droning riffs. And, of course, there's Dale Crover, one of the most inventive drummers to have ever played rock music.

"Working The Ditch" is hyper-repetitive but never boring, a testament to the fact that, when the Melvins are at their best, they are capable of establishing a musical motif and exploring every inch of it without that pursuit ever becoming tedious. They followed it up with two other new-to-me songs, and I was shocked by how much I was enjoying them. These songs were more cohesive and vibrant than anything I'd heard over the past 16 years of Melvins releases, so by the time they started dashing off tracks from Bullhead, Houdini, Stoner Witch, and (A) Senile Animal, I was utterly rapt.

They never let more than a second elapse between songs, packing 11 of them into 45 minutes and making me wish they were on stage for double that time. It was one of those rare moments where all the cynicism I had toward the band, and music in general, left my head, and I was totally present in the moment. Even at shows I've been anticipating for months, I can sometimes fall victim to my mind wandering, or peeking at my phone to check the score of a baseball game, but I didn't want to miss a single second of the Melvins. By the end of their set, I'd found that, magically, I'd moved forward from the side of the crowd to within three rows of the barricade. I wasn't doing this intentionally, I found myself inching forward every chance I got so I could be closer, even more enveloped by what was taking place.

Moments like that are what keep me going back to shows even after decades of doing it. Sure, I mostly see bands where I leave saying, "That was pretty good," and never think of it again. Occasionally, I have an experience so profoundly moving that even now, a full two weeks later, I can close my eyes and see flashes of it all in vivid detail. This is why I keep doing this. That's the feeling that made me want to dedicate my life to music so many years ago, and I'm lucky to have those little reminders of that fact.

I've been living in the jet stream of that show in the weeks since. Aside from revisiting the Melvins records I know and love, I made a pass through the most recent run of albums and, to my surprise, found that the band actually seemed to regain its footing. 2022's Bad Mood Rising, terrible title notwithstanding, played like a return to form, as much as a band that routinely released experimental, found-sound records in the middle of their major label run can have an expected, signature sound to return to.

If that wasn't enough, 2024's Tarantula Heart completely bowled me over. Though it certainly does have a gimmick central to its creation, it feels more inspired. Crover and Nausea drummer Roy Mayorga (listen, he may have done more high-profile stuff but Nausea is the most important credit in his discography) worked out drum arrangements to songs Osborne and bassist Steven McDonald had already written and then, with lengthy drum jams recorded, Osborne decided to go back and entirely re-record new guitar parts. Where the entirety of the 2010s felt like the Melvins' prolific nature had them locked solely in a first-thought, best-thought mentality, this willingness to revise and reshape the material proved deeply fruitful. Even the 19-minute opener, which cycles through four distinct modes, plays like a coherent statement, one that shows the band has plenty of life left in them.

Beyond the pure magic of the show and my renewed appreciation for the band, what I've been left with is the impulse to create solely for the self, not a scene. When things get a little too staid, it's necessary to push back against it by whatever means necessary. Not all of those things will resonate with other people, and I've spent a good chunk of this complaining about being on the receiving end of that. But regardless of whether or not everything lands, I do have to respect people who do the work for themselves and no one else. While it's nice to be comforted by the familiar, it's just as important to let something reorient your psyche, even if you're not prepared for it. That's something I hope I carry with me, no matter what phase of my creative life I'm in.