MUSIC

The Thekla, Bristol (Fri 4 Nov)

Just when you thought The Melvins couldn't get any more savage, this happens: bassist Jared Warren singles out someone in the crowd and gestures to slit their throat. For an urgent split second, this seeming shaggy-dog type appears wild, diabolical even: eyes fierce as he slashes a digit across his neck. Moments later, however, he drops the act, mouthing goofily: just kidding. A wicked-funny flip-flop that brilliantly conjures The Melvins's deathly comic tone. They're a dirty and murderous joke, all right, and one you won't forget in a hurry.

To re-phrase that well-known idiom: slow and heavy wins the race. The Melvins have been dredging the sewers of rock 'n' roll since 1983 and unlike other grunge staples – some of whom disbanded then re-formed, others who vanished entirely – they are staunch tourers and churners out of records (of which they have 19, including latest output 'Sugar Daddy Live'). To this day, the begrudged 'grandfathers of grunge’ still harness the power to crush gravity, while remaining at all times funny as shit.

On stage, it appears Jo Brand scoffed Robert Smith (squints). That's shock-fro'd singer Buzz Osborne – aka King Buzzo – who claimed in Mark Yarm's 'Everybody Loves Our Town: A History Of Grunge' that if he hadn't discovered music, he'd have “blown his brains out”. Meanwhile, Jared Warren cuts a figure like a hippified Rory McGrath. And at the inscrutably dark core of this oppressive racket, Dale Crover, he of early-Nirvana fame. Crover leads from the front with his hammer-of-the-gods blows and crazy-time breakdowns.

Clearly, The Melvins are an incomparable brute. Restrict themselves to meat-and-potatoes stoner chug they do not. A band clearly intoxicated by The Cramps as well as Cream, and Black Flag as well as Black Sabbath. All poisoned with a sick, schizoid humour that brings to mind Crover's Tomahawk band mate, Mike Patton, at his gross-out best. Thrash, punk, doom and high-camp horror all get slayed by these iniquitous sadists.

A check-your-cacks-on-the-way-out kinda show. (Jamie Skey)

Copyright Jamie Skey 2011