The monolithic punk-metal speed and molasses dirges of the Melvins establish the group as both forerunners and contemporaries of the Pacific Northwestern musical underground of the early ‘90s. In the modern era, singer and guitarist Buzz Osborne, drummer Dale Crover, and current bass player Steven McDonald have continued pushing the group to creative new heights with 2022’s, Bad Mood Rising, followed by this year’s The Devil You Knew, The Devil You Know, featuring the original versions along with new recordings of the six songs from the Melvins’ debut 7-inch EP.
Now, Melvins have teamed up with Atlanta-based abstract electronic project Void Manes to unleash an homage to British industrial music luminaries Throbbing Gristle, titled Throbbing Jazz Gristle Funk Hits (Amphetamine Reptile Records). It’s an entirely electronic album—a first for the Melvins—featuring TG-inspired improv sessions and covers of songs such as “Sic Sick 60’s,” “Hot On the Heels of Love,” “Hamburger Lady,” and more. The first single is a thickened take on “Discipline 23,” which appears on the CD and on a flexi single that comes tucked inside the LP sleeve.
The video, created by Jesse Nieminen, builds on TG’s subversive late ‘70s mantra on dismantling the mechanisms of social and psychological control amid an era defined by misguided patriotism and technology gone awry. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here, a minimalist blend of fascist imagery, made hollow under a sheen of maximum color saturation and distortion, pushes the Melvins’ vision of industrial overload to the nth degree. Press play above and get disciplined.
Throbbing Jazz Gristle Funk Hits is the latest in a loose but ongoing trend of paying homage to the confrontational and anti-commercial/pro-good-taste force that prompted British tabloids to label Throbbing Gristle “the wreckers of civilization.” “Heathen Earth” appears on the Melvins’ covers CD titled Everybody Loves Sausages. Head down the Discogs rabbit hole and there are more TG renditions by all parties involved to be discovered and devoured.
“Buzz talks a lot about giving people creative freedom and he’s right on about it,” Nieminen says. “There might be some discussion beforehand or none at all. For ‘Discipline,’ I had an idea, it turned into another, and I put it together. I didn’t ask for suggestions for it. I was free to do whatever I wanted and it was pretty close to what I envisioned from the start.”
Nieminen goes on to say: “We made the A Walk with Love and Death short film together. It was a conversation where we sat and riffed on ideas and edited it together. For Melvins TV they shot green screen in LA and sent stuff for me to do what I wanted,” he adds. “That grew from an idea where I was planning to shoot them in a studio with green screen backdrops and do a single music video in the style of those old German Beat Club episodes. Because of the pandemic it turned into Melvins TV and ballooned into 3.5 episodes.”
In a more recently released video for “Zyklon B Zombie,” Nieminen sets the songs fugue-like bouts of faux tropical rhythms and staccato electronic sounds to waves of billowing and blackened clouds, looped in a tussle of natural beauty rendered exquisitely for the simulacrum. It’s just a taste of what the album holds in store.
March of 2023 marked the 40-year anniversary of the Melvins’ first live performance. The group has spent much of the year celebrating by offering a slew of reissues and new releases, and playing shows around the world. The next Atlanta show is on Wednesday, September 27, at Variety Playhouse, where they’re playing 1991’s sprawling Bullhead LP in its entirety, along with more highlights from throughout the Melvins repertoire.
“We’ve been a band since 1983. We’ve never quit, we’ve never taken a break and stopped being a band, and I have seen people come and go from the highest heights to the lowest lows—death, resurrection, and more death,” Osborne says. “In the art world that I am in, there is a war of attrition; whomever is the last man standing is the winner. So far it’s me, with no end in sight.” READ MORE FROM MY OCTOBER 2022 FLAGPOLE MAGAZINE FEATURE STORY.
Void Manes is performing opening sets at several of the Southern Melvins/Boris shows. Keep your fingers crossed that they tear into some of the Throbbing Jazz … material on stage.
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