From the Melvins songs that I like, it sounds more to me like Metallic minus all of the annoying shit that Metallic does on the side. I can see how that lends them to "shittier" if you mean less stuff. Like "Boris," almost one riff through the whole fucking song. Shit to some, hard to deny that, but that's more or less what I would listen to Metallica for, one super-simple riff.

Elsewhere, I dislike Melvins when they sound like Metallica covering KISS.

From your post I gather that philosophy should completely avoid any criticism and judgement of the world around us, then, with due pointing out on my part that this being a music forum which mostly consists of record buyers, musicians, listeners, general fuckwits, and (I think) wageless music writers, it's not surprising that the main subject pops up here and there in the guises of personal thoughts about it.
Please, you sound a little daft.

If it really bothers you then DONT FUCKING REPLY!
I made my point about iraq in the thread, many other people, SuchFriends and others, disagreed with me. Even if i object to Suchfriends' points, i respect him for at least making them in full public view. Here is what happened

I made my feelings known about Iraq
Lots of people disagreed with me
YOU decided to give me some "negative-reputation"
I sent you a private message explaining why i disagreed with you, and that i felt you not responding to me in front of everyone was poor on your part.
You decided to post said private message for everyone to see (which i have no problem with, by the way) rather than respinding to me personally as i did to you.
Ergo, you are a pussy because i made my point in front of everyone and submitted it to arguement, you did not.

Again, if this is too much, please put me on ignore, thats what the button is there for. And you are one tiresome bag of nothingness yourself may i say.

thanks for your respinse. after that stunning display of logic, i can see now that ergo, i am a pussy, and am utterly delighted at this new state of ontological vaginaness that you have bestowed upon me. oh brave one, someday the deep wounds caused by that neg rep will heal and your courageous neo con truth shall ring out across this message board.

Yeah, it should.

You're right, it's no surprise that the subject pops up and we're certainly allowed our subjective territory. Perhaps my post was too strongly worded? I didn't mean it as a condemnation of the thread as much as a caveat to conclude whatever nik was going on about.

I think the thing is, I feel like if you're going to do Metallica-esque metal, you may as well be Metallica. If Metallica ever tried to be hip, or anything other than "WERHHHHUUUUGH!!!! FUCKING YEAH!!!! METALLICA!!!!!" then they'd lose everything that makes them Metallica. Boris are ok, because, y'know, that's what Boris do. I just feel like the Melvins are a bit like a metal band it's ok for indie kids to like, or a metal band for people who can't appreciate THE SHRED.

I have no idea what Nick is going on about.
Pbradley, I have a question for you: do you smoke dope?

cheers sweetheart

that thread really is a massacre

No, or at least not in over a year.

i think maybe pbradley assumed i was argueing about the melvins... but it was completely unrelated... i can't understand what post of mine he was referring to...

i think this thread is so bad that we are close to descending to a point of absolute chaos were all notion of understanding or sense is lost and it ends up a 60 page dumpster of molding pizzas and abortions.

That's actually pretty accurate to my opinion. I in no way dislike the melvins, but "sexless", or soulless, has always been my problem with them. Sadly, their cover of Kiss's "Blind" is my most listened track by them.

And I am a very consistent pot smoker. But when I'm high I usually want to listen to anything from Warren Zevon to Curtis Mayfield to Royal Trux. The obvious weed music doesn't usually do it for me.

Exactly. There seems to be a lot of people claiming that the Melvins are 'good at what they do', when I'd say that what they do, in principle, is brilliant, they just do it really boringly. For all their supposed 'heaviness', I just don't hear it. As you say, their lack of dynamics only ends up thining their sound out. They have a heavy 'tone' but I never hear any real power in it. A completely different band, I know, but I've just been listening to Live Skull's 'Fort Belvedere' which, while it has what might objectively be described as a pretty weedy tone, has far more real cathartic power than anything I've heard by The Melvins.

To clarify, I mean the Melvins song "Boris" by which that band took their name.

Maybe Melvins are an indie kid-approved metal band but that's getting into audience-criticism. I don't buy that is the only reason people would listen to the Melvins, besides which the Melvins were around before the indie kid meme-set. Is wanting the metal hold the shredding so terrible? Or is wanting Metallica's core sound without that shredding and other affiliated metal tropes so shamefully indie?

it's their very sexlessness that i find appealing.

what i like about them as that for such simplisitic music they are surprisingly difficult to appreciate, i spent years with the opinion "yeah they're ok but who would want to actual listen to one of their albums", but now i find them preferable to stuff like nirvana or aic that ive heard a million times already.

they took a new direction each album and i can appreciate their tirelessness in looking for new ways to invigorate the same sound. and it's actually really good when it hits.

as for dynamics, they have this underwater murk that i can totally see why people find off putting because it is quite difficult to tune into. it's only really on the last 2 albums that they've nailed any kind of clarity.

but i prefer the houdini sound.

I know what you mean about metal indie kids can like, and i myself have never liked metallica. But there is something in heavy metal one can gravitate towards it just depends how its expressed. I would say its similar to indie- a word i feel unpleasent about when hearing it, but there is good dtuff that falls under said umbrellas

Okay, then I was responding to the general "fuck you, the Melvins are AWESOME" reaction.

Fuck you the Melvins are AWESOME!

without the Melvins there would have been no BLEACH.
The first 5-6 melvins LP's and EP's were some of the greatest heavy music ever laid on wax.

I have not heard the last ten years of melvins recorded output, but what I do have is prized . PRIZED I SAY!

Death of a comma.

The thing with music is that there is a vernacular of musicology. The problem with rock is that pretty much anything like the Melvins is a very short conversation. Blues, slower, sometimes fewer intervals, long. That's it. Talking about the audience gets to the genuine subtleties in the music (timbre, tone, production etc) much quicker than describing what valves they use on their amps. It's usually easier to use oblique, inexact euphemisms than it is to treat music like a lab-case.

I'm telling you this like you're a fucking idiot, rather than playing the fucking idiot.

The 'indie kid meme-set' [incidentally, that's a grotesque phrase] is a paradigm that predates any exact chronology. Again, inexact language.

Regardless of all this, the Melvins remain shit. Although there was one track I like.

I don't have a problem with The Melvins' alleged approximation of metal as such, since metal has a mutant nature that is one of the most absorbent compared to other variants of rock music. I did get a sense that a portion of the crowd at their gigs might as well been attending any other band called The Melvins, though, but that's just another personal impression.
I am with demonrail on this, the tone on their guitar is there in sound, yet there is a distinct lack of licks, or touches, for wanting of a better word, that would make their music that little less motionless, or dead end, like somebody already pointed out, and more spirited-sounding. What I'm probably trying to say is that they don't seem to understand that pacing down the playing shouldn't mean that you have to let it die a boring death, you could just give it a sense of occasion that their records lack completely.

They're no Maiden. And in not being Maiden, they're no Priest either. They're barely Man-O-War.

They're Whitesnake for the Volvo generation.

A few years ago I was listening to a punk compilation, and there was a Melvins track on it. I started listening to it, thought "this sounds like Metallica" and skipped to the next track.
Around a month ago I decided to buy a Melvins album because I like bands like Boris and Metallica now. I decided on Stoner Witch. Half way through listening I turned it off. I know Melvins fans will say I didn't give them a proper chance or I need to listen to more, but I just don't want to.

Acid King is better.

Dont you mean the Polvo generation

They're Stoner/Doom's MC5: a great idea on paper but boring as fuck on record (admittedly I've not seen them live).

Blue Cheer were better, too.

Speaking of bands with massively inflated reputations.

i respect the melvins a ton and really like probably five of their albums, but god, when they aren't good, they suck ass. just a lot of really dull half-assed ideas all around. give me flipper, godflesh, swans, electric wizard, boris, neurosis, etc. over these clowns* any day.

*jk buzzo, i still love you. i'm only doing it for the sake of this thread. :7(

I love the Melvins. Just enjoyable to listen to in my ears.

i enjoy eating eggy toast in my mouth

Polvo should make a volume 2 for sure. Any volunteers out there?

They're alright. Some songs are pretty damn good, others make me yawn.

I saw them live. The show was sold out, we didn't have tickets...but were let in right before they played. They had 2 drummers for the gig, which was really cool; and their stage presence was commanding.

My favorites are Stoner Witch, Ozma and Houdini.

Well, yes, but if you want to distinguish Metallica from Melvins, you're going to need be a bit more exact than the audience as, in this case, "indie kid" is obscure to the point of phantasmic. This is why I used that grotesque phrase which, in the way I am thinking of it, puts the audience in a post-2000 confluence of transmutable ethics and aesthetics. To extend it before then would require a terminal dose of retrospective plying and Melvins certainly predate it. Are there genuine, subtle differences between Metalllica and Melvins that make the latter any less legitimate? I just get the sense that this typically spins out of relevance to be saying that indie kids are shittier than metal kids so the Melvins are shittier than Metallica, all while pointing at unsubstantiated continuity of subtleties. I don't think there is any saving grace evidence there within the subtleties to provide a narrative of music quality that makes Melvins necessarily shit. It begins with first impressions.

I'm sorry, I'm taking this too far. I just haven't thought about the Melvins, or even the quality of any music, in such a long time that I'm reopening my own reservations. I'm thinking of deleting this post. The Melvins are just a band.

their latest album was quite numetal-y in places, truth be told. Theyre ahead of us all.

Well, this is the thing - either you understand what I said or you don't; the meaning is pretty self-evident - of course there's a presumed value-judgement within the context of what I said. This isn't absolute, but it isn't therefore obscure. I don't believe you don't understand what I said, and what I was getting at. I also don't think you're thinking I was making an empirical statement. I think you're well aware that I was describing why I don't like the Melvins. I'm sure you're aware this doesn't matter one jot in the great manner of things. You can complicate matters all you like (and you do seem to like it) but this isn't a thread for an analysis of the suppressed premises of blithe internet statements on bands; neither is it the thread to disentangle the horizon-point of semiotic saturation within the given context. It could be, but you're going to have to re-word your questions better in order to make it so, otherwise you're just being a prick. Obviously, in kind, I'm being a cunt.

a lady once told me that her husband "has been friends with the Melvins for years"

I was unimpressed.

ps: our King Buzzo always stated that he HATED the Melvins. the gremlin changed his name, I'm sure.


why would you do such a thing? have you started breathing yet??