Where to start with introducing Melvins. Maybe by zooming out a little and showcasing some examples of vocalist/guitarist Buzz Osborne’s influence on the last 50 years of rock music. His shadow looms unquantifiably large over genres like grunge, sludge, drone and alt metal. The likes of Mike Patton, Kim Thayil [Soundgarden], Adam Jones [Tool], Emma Ruth Rundle and countless others cite his significant influence. Then there’s his much documented (and often mythologized) friendship with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Alongside lifelong collaborator and friend, drummer Dale Crover, he’s put out over well over 40 albums under the Melvins name, each overflowing with titanic downtuned riffs and a singular absurdist aesthetic that ranges from darkly surreal to downright hilarious.
As the mammoth Melvins discography grows at a rapid rate (rarely does a year go by without any new music), the band—whose lineup for the past decade has also included bassist Steve McDonald—have found endless different ways to experiment with and deconstruct the band’s boundaries. Alongside collaborative albums with the likes of Jello Biafra, Helms Alee and numerous others, they’ve recorded soundtracks, covers albums and used lineups featuring members of Big Business and Butthole Surfers. Osborne and Crover have also performed as different incarnations of Melvins, including Melvins Lite (which features Mr. Bungle’s Trevor Dunn) and Melvins 1983, which sees original member Mike Dillard on drums. These examples only scratch the surface of the duo’s musical curiosity. Every Melvins album finds some interesting and unusual new permutation of the band’s existing parameters. To use radio DJ John Peel’s description of The Fall, they are always different, they are always the same.
The start of 2025 has seen the release of two new Melvins records. A vinyl-only collaboration with Napalm Death came out in February, while latest release Thunderball (another Melvins 1983 album, out this week via Ipecac), sees the band supplementing their signature doom with contributions from two avant-electronic musicians in the shape of Void Manes and Ni Maîtres. The result is five tracks that encapsulate everything the alternative music world loves about Melvins; bludgeoning grooves, booming vocals, eclectic experimentation and giddy, colourful absurdity.
Treble spoke to the as-garrulous-and-provocative-as-ever Buzz Osborne about this latest album, collaborations, Melvins’ extensive discography and his legendary work ethic.
Treble: I feel like, if taken away from the actual definition (a military term for a mushroom cloud) and the James Bond film, the word ‘thunderball’ is a good descriptor of the Melvins’ overall sound and vibe. Would you agree?
Buzz Osborne: I was actually thinking of the James Bond movie [laughs]. I’m a huge fan. Nuclear bombs make sense though. We haven’t used them in a while, that’s good.
Treble: In the album’s press release you talk about wanting this record to be ‘bombastic’, how do you define bombastic within the parameters of the Melvins?
BO: Straight-ahead, no let up.
Treble: Have you ever made a record that you think isn’t bombastic?
BO: The two other Melvins 1983 albums had a bit more humor to them, with the Beach Boys cover. I feel like we can get away with that stuff more with Melvins 1983. But for this one we said “screw that”. We wanted it to be a bit more brutal than stuff in the recent past. When you’ve done the better part of 40 albums you start to think “what exactly do you do?” It’s not the execution of it, it’s more “what’s next?”
Treble: At what stage did Void Manes and Ni Maîtres come into the writing process?
BO: What they did was they recorded things, then they sent them to me and I put them into the album. They sent me a bunch of stuff and I went through it. On “Vomit Of Clarity,” for example, I took stuff they both did and combined it into one.
Treble: Almost like sampling?
BO: It wasn’t quite sampling, more just cutting it out [laughs] I just found sections and whole passages that would work. At this point I don’t even remember who did what on each track, they might.
Treble: How much does the finished article resemble or not resemble the thing you imagined when you were writing and recording it?
BO: I think it’s better. Sometimes that happens. The thing about making a record is, I had this down last fall. So I’ve been listening to it since before that. I’ll listen to it from the time it’s mastered, which was last November, until around the time it comes out. So a few weeks ago I quit listening to it. By the time people hear it I’ve moved on.
For me it’s difficult to be unbiased. I hear it warts and all and differently to how you would. I couldn’t make a fair assessment of it. There’s things that people like on our records that I don’t like. There’s also things that I didn’t like from 20 years ago that I’ll listen back to and wonder why I didn’t like it. Time heals all wounds.
Treble: Because you’ve created so much music, does someone ever mention something that you’ve written and you can’t remember it?
BO: There’s loads of stuff that I have to re-learn how to play. I’ve written hundreds of songs. I don’t dwell on the past. I don’t think “oh here’s my hit song from 1991, better keep playing it.” I don’t have any hit songs (laughs).
Treble: According to Wikipedia, the first Melvins collaborative album was Pigs Of The Roman Empire, with Lustmord. Is that correct?
BO: I don’t know. Wikipedia is about 70% bullshit, with some kernels of truth in there.
Treble: I did also check Discogs and it seems to be accurate.
BO: Maybe it was our first, I’m trying to think. We did splits with Nirvana and Steel Pole Bathtub. But yeah we recorded stuff for that Lustmord one and gave it to him and he recorded on top of it, then he recorded stuff and gave it to us to record on top of. So that might be our first one, but I could be wrong.
Treble: Do you see similarities with that record and this one?
BO: Yep. It’s very similar. Although I never sent the guys on this one music.
Treble: You’ve also done this record with Napalm Death. It’s on vinyl-only, so many people won’t have heard it. Can you describe it to us instead?
BO: Now that one’s a true collaboration. We got together in a studio, they had some songs and I had some songs and we recorded them together. Then we sent that stuff to Barney [Greenway, Napalm Death vocalist] in England and he recorded more vocals on it. So that one’s me and Dale, Barney, John [Cooke, Napalm Death guitars] and Shane [Embury, Napalm Death bassist]. It came out great and we’ll be selling the vinyl on our upcoming US tour.
Treble: On the topic of that tour, I couldn’t get over how many dates you’re doing. I had to Google one or two of the towns, like one in Montana.
BO: That’s Bozeman, we’ve played there a number of times. Great place. With touring, what I do is I lay out the tour; here’s the towns we want to play, here’s the days off and then I hand it to our booking agents. I want it to be a specific way. I want it set up long in advance so that we don’t have long overnight drives. It’s not always that way with bands. I don’t know why, well, I do, it’s out of pure laziness.
I like to sit down and look at how tours work; why you play certain places, where you put your Friday or Saturday night shows. I like to plan it and organise it to the best of my ability. If I really wanted to sit down and plot it I could probably do 100 U.S. shows in one go, easily.
Treble: Wow. Do you still, and I know this is a nebulous word, ‘enjoy’ or get something out of these huge, 50-date tours?
BO: 53 dates. Not every day, if something’s hideously wrong or wrong at home. But usually it doesn’t affect the show. I like what I’m doing, not all the time, but no one likes what they do for a living every single day. I feel blessed that I can make my living playing music. As soon as I realized that, I never stopped. This is what I do, I never understand bands that are super successful that don’t want to do it. They should always be making records and playing live, why not?
Treble: I once read something that interpreted you as more of a disciplined, hard-grafting worker, rather than as a traditional creative.
BO: I’m hard-working compared to most musicians. Most of them are whore-mongering drug addicts who sit around and do very little. Most platinum-selling, arena-playing musicians I know don’t do shit in their day-to-day lives. I just personally don’t see how, in a year of 365 days, why I can’t do 80-120 shows. That’s less than half of the time. I also don’t see how, in that time, I can’t write and record music. It’s not that difficult.
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