Buzz Osbourne has been doing things a certain way for the last 30 years. Always plugged in to a wall of amps and an array of pedals, he must have thought, at 50 years old, if he’s ever going to try something new and break out of the mould he’s cultivated, it better be now.And so he has.
The driving force behind seminal sludge pioneers, The Melvins, has traded in the “way the fuck down-tuned” Gibson Les Paul for a similarly appointed acoustic, releasing This Machine Kills Artists a few months ago.
The album is a showcase of Osbourne’s guitar work offering glimpse into more conventional song-writing while not completely divorcing itself from the trademark Melvins grunt. And it’s that album that brings King Buzzo to the Black Bear Lodge on a busy Sunday night in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley on the tail end of a demanding few months of touring.
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After a set of unexpectedly delicate acoustic tracks from Blackie from the Hard-ons, the crowd begins to gather en masse at the front of the stage in eager anticipation. Expecting to wait 20 minutes for the headliner the crowd is surprised as the man himself appears on stage, runs through his own sound-check, tunes his guitar and starts strumming without a word.
For those first few minutes he lurches from one side of the stage to the other, staring out menacing into the audience and intermittently headbanging throwing his wild grey hair over his face as he strums his acoustic alternating between heavy handed and feather light strokes.
“I’d like to take, I’d like to feel wanted!” Osbourne explodes in the mic with fury that shocks the crowd to attention and heralds the arrival of Melvins classic ‘Boris’. Without the lumbering giant of drums and distortion behind him Buzzo is no less convicted to the bit, his booming vocals filling all the vacant space in the mix remarkably able to keep the Melvins’ unconventional time signatures without any assistance as he works his way through the eight minute track.
From this huge opener, Buzzo takes the crowd on a journey through several Melvins tracks, an inspired cover of Alice Cooper’s ‘The Ballad of Dwight Fry’ and several tracks off the album including most notably ‘Dark Brown Teeth’ which showcases the songwriter’s penchant for catchy tunes and some of the more complex finger work the veteran is capable of.
Breaking up the set, Buzz is happy to spin his tales gathered from 30 years of rock ‘n’ roll excess with the likes of Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop and Mike Patton about whom, Buzz shares a well received “that time when Mike Patton projectile defecated on the audience story” which may or may not have been true but certainly turned a few stomachs in the audience.
You would think that after a while the sludgey sameness of a million paired-down Melvins riffs may begin to scuff but the way he has arranged these tracks has, in many cases, placed more focus on the vocal performance than the guitar.
In such an acoustic setting, where fellow guitarist J Mascis has a looper and a distortion pedal on hand to emphasise solos, Buzzo stays true to the goal of this enterprise using only his vocals to fill the void and add dynamics to tracks, changing his voice from sinister whispers to melodramatic screams on a penny as each track requires.
After a final ripping medley of Melvins classics including We Are Doomed and Hooch, Buzzo was gone as quickly as he appeared because, he explains, “the methadone clinic is about to close”.
If tonight proves one thing, it’s that those who believe that the release of an acoustic album and subsequent tour might prelude the wilting of one rock’s finest frontmen are set to be disappointed. This acoustic venture is yet another creative outlet for the man to sink his teeth into until he locks in with his Melvins brothers once again.
Hail to the King.
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