Melvins and High On Fire

RW ENTERTAINMENT, UNDER THE RADAR and THE GROOVE GUIDE PRESENTS

MELVINS
HIGH ON FIRE

NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2011

The Melvins have been a band for over 25 years...The Melvins have done a shitload of albums.... How many is a shitload' No one really knows. The Melvins live in Los Angeles and it's understood in hip circles that the United States tilts left and anything covered in slime tends to slide straight out to California. If you're sliding too fast when you slide into San Francisco you tend to glance off south and the real scumbags end up in Los Angeles where their skin dries into a Malibu Ken tan which most hipsters have to painstakingly remove with Easy Off oven cleaner.

Think about the fact that many acts fade away after being one-hit-wonders or maintaining a career for only a decade. Then, when most bands do stick around for longer than that, their material tends to suffer. The music becomes redundant, boring, recycled hogwash that only the most hardcore or dimwitted of fans can support. Not the Melvins.

This band, which is composed of mainstays “King” Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, has progressed in their own twisted way since forming in the early 1980s in Montesano, Washington. The two have also been through a plethora of band members, both in the studio and on the road. Many of them weren’t just random players, either. We're talking guys like guitarist Adam Jones, of Tool (for whom the Melvins opened on their last NZ visit in 2002); bassists Joe Preston of Earth and Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle. There’s also the fact that Kurt Cobain – yes, that Kurt Cobain – tried out for a spot in the band, but couldn’t cut it.

The band’s mythology aside, the Melvins do one thing and they do it well. They create progressive, always-changing, heavy-as-hell music that has remained relevant and interesting since properly debuting with 1987's Gluey Porch Treatments. Since then, the band has dabbled in a number of genres, from noise to punk to metal, sometimes on one album. And we have heard them do just this on 2010's lo-fi garage rock-oozing The Bride Screamed Murder, the band's most recent release. The band have not forgotten their ability to drill chugging, raucous riffs into your skull, and the album is armed with in-stereo, oddly timed guitars that bring to mind old school material from this band of Pacific Northwest rockers. From the first minute, the listener is punched in the throat before a barrage of guitars and drums squeal and slam their way around their airspace.

And yet live is where the eccentric and elastic genius of The Melvins must be seen and heard to be believed. Between the punkish sprints and the sludging riffs - all amplified at such an intense volume that the most diehard headbangers and shoegazers alike are bound to recoil in strangely stimulating sonic shock - the band push fans to their breaking points with extended, plodding soundscapes of feedback and screwy squeaking, punctuated with their trademark sly, get-it-or-you-don't humour. Try and imagine this all unfolding inside a packed, sweat-dripping New Zealand club.

And joining the tour, their first in New Zealand, with a heavy-handed approach and a sound that crashes like thunder, are fellow California residents High On Fire. Less a band than a supersonic exercise in conquest by volume and sheer heaviness, the band has burned the rock rulebook and forged a new archetype.

Before the band had even made its first live appearance, labels flocked to get a piece of the trio's rock hard, unorthodox form of modern metal cloaked in strange religious theology and unique, distinct, and absolutely crushing sonic style. Accolades poured in the world over: Rolling Stone, Spin, GQ, Alternative Press, Magnet, Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Village Voice and dozens of other publications - almost overnight, High On Fire became the unassuming heroes of the riff.

In 2010 came High On Fire's magnum opus Snakes For The Divine - continuing to push the boundaries of stoner rock and metal; infusing the speed of Motorhead into Sabbath-esque riffs topped off with the power of Matt Pike's gruff vocals. Lauded by fans and critics alike and sharper, faster and darker than anything the group has ever recorded, Snakes for the Divine is an unrelenting tour de force that has cemented the band's place as one of the most uniquely potent acts in modern heavy music.

Backed ably by the finest of local openers, February 2011's Melvins + High On Fire New Zealand tour will be the stuff of live legend, to be remembered hazily years after the smoke has settled. Do not miss out on this must-witness experience.

Saturday February 19th - The Kings Arms, Auckland
Sunday February 20th - ReFuel, Dunedin
Monday February 21st - Al's Bar, Christchurch
Tuesday February 22nd - Bodega, Wellington

TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM www.undertheradar.co.nz , www.moshtix.co.nz , Real Groovy (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch), Cosmic Corner (Christchurch, Dunedin) and Marbecks (Dunedin)