(The) Melvins @ The Garage

Lets be frank… any concert that begins with Eighties punk legends Flipper featuring Krist Novoselic (formerly of popular beat-combo Nirvana) on bass guitar, runs the risk of burning itself out a little early.

Not so.

To provide a point of reference for the uninitiated, tonight's main support is Big Business, a bass-driven two-piece that has been touring with The Melvins since September. Thanks to a recent and bizarre act of musical osmosis, this same two-piece now also forms half of The Melvins' current line-up. Big Business mouthpiece and axe-man Jared Warren steps out tonight in a King Buzzo-inspired charcoal smock and unruly black wig. He also makes the most gloriously foul noise with a bass guitar. Huge and brutal, it's like first being hit by a truck then dragged a mile down the road… on your eardrums.

The fact that Big Business' set is so thunderously belligerent from the word go makes it difficult to envisage how the evening's festivities can possibly step up a gear. Yet with the gradual metamorphosis of the two-piece support into the headlining quartet, step up they most certainly do… almost painfully so. Big Business pummels the audience with riffs for twenty minutes until the transition begins. Dale Crover appears first, initially taking up a guitar then, a couple of numbers later, he settles onto his drum-stool as 50% of The Melvins' new dual-percussive line-up.

Novelty value asides, The Melvins use two drummers to great effect. The precision with which the music is executed is frightening. Even on the staccato 'Oven', one of The Melvins' oldest and more esoteric songs, the two kits work in tremendous unison. Osborne's guitar sounds monstrous as usual, if perhaps a fraction too quiet in the mix when compared to the GBH being exacted by the other instruments. The bass, as mentioned, continues to knock the living daylights out of the first three rows for the rest of the evening, taking it only slightly easier on the rest of the room.

Yet surprisingly it's in the vocal department that The Melvins have perhaps benefited most from the assimilation of Big Business. Osborne and Crover's traditional technique of sharing and doubling vocal lines is bolstered greatly by the harmonies made possible by Warren's strong voice and good range. This is demonstrated most noticeably on 'The Talking Horse', 'Civilized Worm' and 'A History of Bad Men', all from recent album (A) Senile Animal.

When the gig ultimately grinds to a close and legs shudder one last time before the hellish undulations thrusting forth from the stage, Buzz's insistence that he formed The Melvins in order to realise his own personal soundtrack to the end of the world seems entirely believable. [Chris Cusack]