The Melvins: Buzz Off!

The Melvins play the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Monday.

This is the third interview I’ve done in the past year with a member of The Melvins. But it’s still the first Melvin’s interview I’ve landed. Guitarist Buzzo managed some time for a chat before his other project Fantomas hit town last year. Fantomas also features the vocal talents of Mike Patton, also a member of Tomahawk, which had me on the phone to Melvins bassist Duane Denison, who also keeps the Tomahawk bottom end together. Incestuous little circle, isn’t it? Perhaps even more so with the release of the new album for the Melvins Fantomas Big Band, and album featuring seven piece recordings of tracks from both the bands.

The Melvins also have a new album all their own. Ambient Hostile Takeover, a lumbering monolith of a record, finds the band wallowing in their own ability to be heavy. In town next week to support Tool, Buzzo is again fronting up for the media circus.

“We think the new albums super great,” he jokingly deadpans. “I don’t know. It’s hard to be objective when you’re talking about your own things. It’s difficult. I don’t really know what to say about it. It’s super great, its cool, it’s classy. Everybody should buy it. Everybody should buy at least six copies of it, just in case,”

Well, you need one for home, one for the car, one for your walkman…

“Yeah, just do it to help us out. We need the money. Please buy it. Buy multiple copies of everything we’ve ever done.”

Is everything you’ve ever done still available?

“Ahh, there’s plenty out there. More that you need.”

When was the album all put together?

“We recorded it all in December of last year in one big shot. Things take a couple of months after you finish a record for it to get into production and come out in the stores. We’ve had it finished for quite a while, but it takes longer to get out there. The machine works at a slow pace with records. You’re six months behind the band buy the time it comes out.”

With your touring commitments with Fantomas has it been hard to find time to get into the studio and do your own thing?

“You just continue to bit off more than you can chew and just take things as them come along. I never say no. I’ve got a while to work on things, just kinda doing something. We work a lot with it. The Fantomas thing doesn’t take up a lot of my time, a couple of months a year maybe. We don’t rehearse that much, so The Melvins is definitely my main focus. Between those two I don’t really have much free time, which is nice.”

When was the recording for the Fantomas Melvins Big Band done?

“That was recorded back in new years 2000. It was all done live. I’ve never done a live recording that we’ve gone back and mixed. It was usually live to two track. This time we went in a chopped it up, some of the songs didn’t get recorded really well and we couldn’t really use them. They were terrible. We didn’t want to put out a 70 or 80 minute record, so we just chopped up the best 40 minutes and edited it together from a bunch of tape on an editing table.”

All done the old school way with razor blades…

“Oh yeah, doing lives of blow and editing records.”

How did you get hooked up in the Tool tour.

“If I’m not mistaken they’ve sold quite a few more records than us… I don’t know. They’re not really big fans of up and coming nu metal kind of stuff. Generally speaking, and through no fault of their own, they’re often much more musically open-minded than some of their fans are. That’s not really their fault. They like stuff like us as opposed to bringing Papa Roach or some other horrible shit band with them. I’m sure there’s people that would take offence to them not doing that, which is probably why they do it. They’re a nice bunch of guys.”

You guys haven’t been in Australia for about four years. Why not a club tour of your own?

“It’s a rather large undertaking to get out and tour. It’s a rather large undertaking, because we’re not a big arena band. I’m hoping we can come back and do our own tour at some point in the future. Tool are about the only band we would do something like this with. I can’t think of any other band I’d want to open for other than maybe Pink Floyd. I’m not going out with the Deftones or anything. We’ve done tours like that in the past, but now they would have to pay me so much money that they would never do it. I’m not going to put myself through that nonsense. It just gets worse. We hate everything about anything that has to do with music. There’s nothing good about any of it.”