Melvins: King Buzzo

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In 1992, Melvins did something wonderfully ridiculous. Taking inspiration from the four individual KISS solo albums of 1978, the band issued three companion solo EPs for Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover and Joe Preston. First out of the gate was King Buzzo, complete with artwork unmistakably designed as a twisted Melvins take on Gene Simmons’ famous solo sleeve.

Musically, though, this is pure Melvins weirdness. King Buzzo isn’t Buzz Osborne attempting to make a conventional solo record; it’s four tracks of lurching riffs, noise, sludge and unsettling experimentation compressed into less than fourteen minutes. There’s an almost industrial quality to parts of the EP, but underneath all the clang and distortion is the enormous guitar sound that made Osborne one of the architects of sludge.

Then there’s Dave Grohl. Recorded around the period when Nirvana were exploding into the mainstream, Grohl performs here under the deliberately obscure credit “Dale Nixon”—a name originally used by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn when he played bass on My War. Grohl contributes drums and other instrumentation, making King Buzzo a particularly interesting meeting point between two enormously influential branches of the Pacific Northwest underground.

The closing “Skeeter” takes the connection even further. It’s derived from Grohl’s “Just Another Story About Skeeter Thompson,” originally recorded for his pre-Foo Fighters Pocketwatch material, and Buzz Osborne doesn’t actually perform on the track. It’s an odd way to finish a supposed King Buzzo solo record—which, naturally, makes perfect sense in Melvins world.

As a standalone release, King Buzzo is short, strange and deliberately abrasive. But placed alongside Dale Crover and Joe Preston, it’s also one of the funniest conceptual exercises in the Melvins catalogue: three underground weirdos taking one of KISS’s grandest marketing exercises and rebuilding it in their own image.

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