Melvins

Ask Osborne about the Black Sabbath comparisons critics reach for by default, and he corrects the record every time. "My playing gets compared to Black Sabbath a lot," he told Gibson.com in 2008, "but the guitar sound of Black Flag was a much bigger influence on me." Asked point-blank in 2017 who had shaped him, he answered with Flipper, Black Flag and Gang of Four, calling them "massive influences on us" - the same trio he'd already named fifteen years earlier, in a 2002 interview, when he put it more bluntly: "we were actually much more into Black Flag than Black Sabbath."

listen: upstream & heresource: Gibson.com (2008) — Buzz Osborne on Black Flag vs. Black Sabbath as a guitar influence ↗share

1984

Nothing Left InsideBlack Flag

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1991

It's ShovedMelvins

listen forSet Black Flag's "Nothing Left Inside," off side two of 1984's My War, against the Melvins' "It's Shoved": both ride one blunt riff at half hardcore speed until the song stops sounding like punk and starts sounding like a slow-motion collapse. That tempo-drop is the guitar sound Osborne says he actually built on - bluntly repetitive rather than blues-phrased like the Sabbath riffing critics keep hearing in his playing instead.

Osborne's fondness for Flipper goes back to the Melvins' earliest days - "we were really into Venom and Flipper and the Swans," he said in a 2002 interview about the period that produced Gluey Porch Treatments - and it never faded into nostalgia. Touring in 2023, drummer Dale Crover described running into Flipper's own members before a Melvins show: "we've been playing 'Sacrifice,' the Flipper song," he said, describing a cover the band still pulls out onstage, decades after first getting hooked on Flipper's crawl.

listen: upstream & heresource: Sandspaper (2017) — Buzz Osborne names Flipper, Black Flag and Gang of Four as "massive influences" ↗share

1982

Sex BombFlipper

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1987

Eye FlysMelvins

listen forFlipper's "Sex Bomb" hangs almost the entire song on one thick, droning riff played well under any hardcore band's pulse. The Melvins pulled the same trick on Gluey Porch Treatments' "Eye Flys," whose central riff crawls at a near-identical pace and refuses to resolve into a chorus or a hook. Both bands use the guitar as a drone generator rather than a lead voice - the sound Crover says the band still hasn't shaken, having kept an actual Flipper song in their live set for decades.

Osborne has named Gang of Four's guitarist Andy Gill among his favorite guitarists - alongside Jimi Hendrix - in a 2013 interview, and the admiration predates that by over a decade: in a 2002 interview he singled out Gang of Four's 1981 album Solid Gold as a record from the band's formative years that "has remained a favorite." It's one of three bands, alongside Black Flag and Flipper, that he calls out whenever he's asked directly what shaped the Melvins' sound.

listen: upstream & heresource: Sandspaper (2017) — Buzz Osborne names Flipper, Black Flag and Gang of Four as "massive influences" ↗share

1981

ParalysedGang of Four

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1993

Night GoatMelvins

listen forGang of Four's "Paralysed" turns the guitar into a scraping, percussive instrument instead of a melodic one - all stops and stabs, no solos. The Melvins' "Night Goat" borrows that same angular, start-stop logic and drags it down to doom tempo, guitar and drums locking into the same off-kilter, gap-filled groove Gill pioneered rather than any blues-rock runs. It's the specific guitarist Osborne names, not just the band.