Fri 30 Sept
★★★★☆
words: NOEL GARDNER photos: SIMON AYRE
Objectively speaking, this might not be the most up-for-it Friday night crowd you or I or any of us have ever been among. However, when you factor in the discrepancy between the enthusiasm of this 350-strong audience, and the mood and tempo of most of the music they’ve assembled to listen to, it really is something to behold. The side dishes of payday and unseasonably warm weather are an influence, too, but some folks really do reserve their special moves for the Melvins – the sardonic and hugely influential extreme rock band from the USA’s Pacific Northwest who have been going for nearly three decades and are playing Cardiff for the third time in five years.
This time out is a superior experience to the last one, in the Cardiff Barfly, when the band turned in a more than serviceable set but in an unlovely venue with a poor view. Also, the sound for support act Big Business (whose members Jared Warren and Coady Willis also play in the Melvins, so were doing two sets a night) was so bad, they might as well have not bothered. This show is in a much better venue, but there are no supports at all, which given that the band come on at 9pm seems slightly miserly. Ah, sod it: here they are, on the dot, dressed like men celebrating the bet they won by dressing for a bet. Bassist Warren in some sort of muu-muu; Willis, one of the band’s two drummers, as a San Fran leatherboy; guitarist/vocalist and founder member Buzz Osbourne in a fleece with a rollneck that covers most of his face. Opening with the song that pretty much created a metal microgenre – the unnervingly slow Lysol and the ‘drone doom’ played by bands like Sunn 0))) – and getting a huge sound out of a PA system that looks far punier than its results suggest.
Until, apparently, one of life’s winners throws a full pint at a speaker and leaves it sonically hobbling for a few songs until a replacement is located. Fortunately, or perhaps deliberately, this includes The Water Glass, the a capella chant-filled opening song on most recent Melvins LP The Bride Screamed Murder. It’s the newest song they play, in a 90-minute set which includes few of their near-everpresents like Eye Flys and Boris, leaning heavily on what you might call ‘ones for the fans’. I mean, I certainly count myself as a fan and there were a few numbers outside my frame of reference.
From the last decade, though, there was a huge tear into The Kicking Machine which incites men who should know better to slamdance and crowdsurf; Civilised Worm and the inexplicably anthemic A History Of Bad Men. From centuries past, Amazon from their terrific Ipecac Records debut The Maggot; 1991 oddity It’s Shoved (Melvins’ expressively inexpressive songtitles are one of the secret great things about them) and The Bit, known nowadays for being covered by metal big-leaguers Mastodon. By the end, people seem to be pretty much losing their shit to anything, irrespective of its tempo or delivery. There is absolutely no crowd interaction and no-one seems fussed. The jury is out on whether this says more about the transgressive power of the Melvins’ mammoth riffs, or the dedication of most of the audience to getting shitfaced. Maybe it’s a bit o’both.