walking upstream…
Melvins
Formed in 1983 in Montesano, Washington, and anchored since 1984 by guitarist Buzz Osborne (King Buzzo) and drummer Dale Crover, the Melvins slowed hardcore punk down to a doom-metal crawl, trading speed for weight and repetition. Kurt Cobain - a fellow Aberdeen-area kid who roadied for the band and once auditioned on bass - has repeatedly credited the Melvins as the group that showed him a heavier way forward for Nirvana; Cobain later received a co-production credit on the Melvins' 1993 major-label debut Houdini and played guitar on its track "Sky Pup." Decades and multiple bassists later, Osborne and Crover still tour and record prolifically, treated by younger heavy and noise-rock bands as a living hinge between hardcore punk, metal, and the sludge and stoner-rock scenes that followed.
the sound in question
1993
Honey BucketMelvins
walk the tributaries ↓
Black Flag1980s · Hardcore punk / Punk rock
Osborne has said his own guitar playing is more influenced by Black Flag than by any metal band, and has named Black Flag among the "massive influences" he'd cite outright; Black Flag's 1984 album My War - which slows from hardcore speed into a dirge-like second side - is widely credited as the record that taught the Melvins to drag their tempos down into what became their signature crawl.
listen: upstream & heresource: Loudwire ↗
1984
Nothing Left InsideBlack Flag
1991
It's ShovedMelvins
listen forThe grinding, half-speed tempo and blunt, repetitive riff of It's Shoved - the same tempo-collapse trick Black Flag pulled across My War's slow second side, stripped of any remaining punk urgency.
Black Sabbath1970s · Heavy metal / Hard rock
In the same interview where he described mixing Bowie and Black Flag into the Melvins' sound, Osborne named Black Sabbath as the third ingredient; the band's downtuned, funeral-slow riffing is routinely traced to early Sabbath, even as Osborne has said his own guitar attack owes more to Black Flag's bluntness than to Tony Iommi's blues-rooted phrasing.
listen: upstream & heresource: Loudwire ↗
1970
ParanoidBlack Sabbath
1991
BorisMelvins
listen forBoris's crawling, downtuned central riff and the doom-laden space left between notes - the same weighted, horror-movie heaviness Sabbath introduced on Paranoid, just slowed to a funeral pace and stripped of swing.
David Bowie1970s · Art rock / Glam rock
Buzz Osborne has said the Melvins' sound was conceived by "mixing David Bowie, Black Flag and Black Sabbath together," and he's traced his own taste for theatrical strangeness back to hearing Bowie's Diamond Dogs as a teenager and thinking, "this guy's a total freak, but he speaks to me in a way nothing else has."
listen: upstream & here
1974
Diamond DogsDavid Bowie
1993
Night GoatMelvins
listen forNight Goat's lurching, half-spoken verses and glammy, theatrical menace - the same appetite for grandiose weirdness Bowie brought to Diamond Dogs' dystopian concept-album sprawl, just dragged down to sludge tempo.