Punk: The Melvins at the Rickshaw: a foursome of Nordic Gods. (Literally, check out the pictures from their current tour. Unbelievable, unadulterated, and pretty wicked.)

A few weeks ago I made my way down to the Rickshaw Theatre on East Hastings here in Van and had the ear-deafening pleasure of experiencing The Melvins live. (Totimoshi opened.) The Melvins are a trio who formed about 1983 with influences from Black Flag (Henry Rollins) and Flipper (Kurt Cobain favored Flipper’s merch t-shirts) in the Seattle area whom bands such as Tool, Mastadon and of couse Soundgarden, Green River and Nirvana quote as a strong influence. Dale Crover, the Melvins drummer, even played in Nirvana for a time, before opting to make his way back to the Melvins. On July 5 2010 King Buzzo (Buzz Osborne) mounted his amp, draped in his famous robe/cape ensemble, and his trademark fro, backlit in emblazoned red to perfection. The crowd was a sea of black hardcore band t-shirts, tattoos and studded leather jackets-prime for moshing. (I watched from the edge, even with Doc Martins, I was not about to dive head first into that mess of man-ponytail and fist pumps.) The summary of that concert was that it was freaking cool. (I'm trying to find ways around swearing in this blog)

If you weren't at the show, man, that sucks. If you were, good call.

Anyways, getting on with it... 

The Melvins have recently released their TWENTIETH album: The Bride Screamed Murder

Check out the review.

A fellow blogger's personal take on the Melvins, because the more info on a band, the better... 

alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com

Like I said, Nordic gods.

Melvins setlist:

Sacrifice
The Civilized Worm
Black Stooges
Pig House
Electric Flower
Skin Horse
Anaconda
Black Bock
The Kicking Machine
Billy Fish
The Water Glass
Evil New War God
Amazon
The Talking Horse
Hung Bunny
Roman Bird Dog
My Generation
Let It All Be
Lovely Butterfly