When it comes to ceaseless regeneration, reinvention and revolving door band membership, The Melvins really are never the same band from year to year. The last time they played Leeds, as part of the ‘100 Minutes of Melvins Tour’, they brought a brace of drummers (dressed as Roman centurions, no less) and hammered out – as the billings suggests, 100 minutes of riffage in front of a packed-out crowd at The Irish Centre, capacity 800. Small wonder this show at the north’s most revered venue, with a killer PA and a reputation that far exceeds its 450 capacity, sold out a good two months in advance.
It’s an odd night: having battled through the heaving car park, where a large crowd are watching the England match on the immense screen installed outside the venue, I find myself killing time in the bar, half watching the match, half-reading the latest offering from Chuck Palahniuk.
I venture into the auditorium a quarter of an hour before stage time to witness some 200 or so Melvins fans sitting on the floor watching football on a screen at the back of the stage. The match ends a tedious but effective 0-0 draw and the crowd rushes to the stage minutes before the riff legends pick up their instruments and crank out some noise. No, not some noise, but a whole battery of noise, commencing with a squall of feedback and that grinds its way into the shuddering, jolting trudge of ‘Fly Eyes’ from 1987 debut album ‘Gluey Porch Treatments’.
They may ostensibly be touring their latest offering, the crazy compendium that is ‘Bases Loaded’, but this is (the) Melvins, a band who thrive on perversity and unpredictability, and only a handful of tracks from the new album feature in the set. Of course they’re not touring with the legendary bassists they hauled into the studio to record the album, but one of them is pivotal to this power-trio set-up they’re on the road with for this jaunt.
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Steve McDonald, of Redd Kross and OFF! renown, proves to be a truly brilliant choice of bassist, relentlessly pogoing, star jumping, lunging, lurching and generally exuding an irrepressible energy. In fact, being a power trio really suits the band, particularly in this venue and with this set-list, which is very much geared toward the dense, thunderous riff-led tracks they’re renowned for but often deviate from in the studio. Buzzo’s thick-weave velvet kaftan is quite spectacular, with three-dimensional eyes bulging from it every which-way, and a large iris protruding from his chest. Buzzo himself is burning with energy as he lurches and lunges his way through a killer set, and with Crover’s drum kit well forward on the compact stage, the intensity is amplified.
‘With Yo’ Heart Not Yo’ Hands’ crashes in early in the set, and there are covers galore during the trio’s80-minute set (no surprise that one of them is a Kiss song, in the form of ‘Deuce’). But never for a second does any of it sound like anything other than Melvins at their sludgiest, trudgiest: ‘Queen’ from ‘Stoner Witch’ gets an airing, as does ‘Night Goat’ from ‘Houdini’. There are other lesser-known cuts from singles and compilations, including ‘Euthanasia’ from AmRep’s ‘Dope Guns and Fucking in the Streets’ series in 1990.
They wrap up with ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’, and it’s fair to say that the Melvins have shown themselves to be on top form.
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