A History of Bad Men - Melvins

The Melvins are another band from the state of Washington, the band was formed Buzz Osborne (aka King Buzzo), Matt Lukin, and Mike Dillard while they were attending Montesano High School in Montesano, WA. Out of the founding members, only King Buzzo remains in the band, who is, apart from his well-known ties to Kurt Cobain, famous for his weird hairstyle (I love it though), bizarre humor, and his sludgy, mid-tempo guitar playing. It is difficult to tell the genre of music they are playing; the easiest thing would be to call it alternative or alternative punk, but a sludge metal, doom metal, or a stoner rock label could also suit it. The Melvins is a case in which these labels definitely fail to tell you the whole story, they have changed and reinvented themselves countless times, for example, their current lineup includes two drummers, which is rarely used in popular music.

Osborne's guitar of choice has been the iconic Gibson Les Paul for a long-long time, which can be seen on the picture on the left, but while rehearsing in the same building as the band Isis, he was introduced to his new crush, an Electrical Guitar Company Standard Guitar, which is made out of aluminium, equipped with Les Paul pickups.

King Buzzo's approach to effects is to keep it simple. As you can see in the video embedded below, currently he only uses 5 pedals in his live rig: a BOSS ODB-3 Bass Overdrive, a BOSS DD-3 Digital Delay, an MXR Blue Box, an MXR Dyna Comp, and a BOSS TU-2 Chromatic Tuner as his tuner. His pedalboard is the perfect example of 'less is more', even with these few pedals, he can achieve various tones and sounds.


The two most exciting pedals on this board are the BOSS Bass Overdrive and the MXR Blue Box (which is a relatively new favorite of mine). The Bass Overdrive is, as its name implies, primarily made for bass players, but King Buzzo decided to use it for his guitar as his main overdrive/distortion. This pedal gives that special, sludgy sound to the newer Melvins records; we have to be grateful to BOSS that this pedal happens to be able to function at higher frequencies too. The other intriguing pedal is the MXR Blue Box, which is a Fuzz and an Octave pedal combined. It has real simple controls, one knob for the output and one for the mixing of the fuzz and the octave. Turned to the left, it gives you only two octaves down, and all-out fuzz when turned to the right. Gotta love this glitchy stompbox.