September is always the time of year for some metal is seems. September 2023 will be going down in the history books for two reasons in relation to the heavier sides of metal. On one hand is this month’s deluge of great new death metal records such as Cannibal Corpse’s Chaos Horrific, Dying Fetus’ Make Them Beg for Death and Tomb Mold’s The Enduring Spirit. Suffocation and Autopsy released new singles for the first time in years, even Cryptopsy released another album, unfortunately. However, this article is about live performances, and this month was a very heavy hitter for the genre of sludge metal in particular. Sludge metal is a genre near and dear to me, a slow crushing monolith of diverse and intense sounds that spans quite a gauntlet over the years, evolving through the sort of bands this article is reviewing. These are bands I’ve seen live multiple times, four even in Boris’ case now, but there’s also a notable newcomer to close out the article, so stick around. These bands clear a path riffing with the flattening power of a cartoonish streamroller. They hit harder than a STAB Sludge Bomb attack from my boy Muk in the article header picture, and will leave your ears aching and dulled to the background world in the aftermath. That’s a good thing by the way, just don’t be like me and see all these bands multiple times without wearing ear plugs unless you want to go deaf by the age of 35 like I’m on my way toward. This is the rare combo article, so in this one I am reviewing both the co-headlining Twins of Evil tour featuring Melvins in their 40th year as an active band and Boris past their 30th year, performing 1991’s Bullhead and 2002’s Heavy Rocks in their entirety respectively, and also Crowbar’s 2023 tour which serves as a 30th anniversary tour for their self titled 1993 album, featuring opening act Primitive Man. The noises I am about review are toxic, weighty and crawling in pace. Bring a hazmat suit.
Let’s start with the Twins of Evil tour, a genius pairing of Melvins and Boris finally after all these years, performing two of their most acclaimed and influential albums which absolutely hold up over time. On September 14, 2023, this tour hit up the Beachland Ballroom and it was a practically mandatory thing for myself to witness in person. This was the second time I’d seen Melvins and the fourth time I’d seen Boris, I reviewed last year’s Boris tour in the very same venue on here if you’d like to dive deeper, needless to say I’m a very big fan of both bands both live and on the record. Both of these bands do have an approach best described as quantity over quality, I’ve never heard all 36 proper Melvins albums either and I probably never will, same deal as Boris. But I can also say I’ve heard every album that’s actually worth listening to, multiple times over, and they are really amazing works. In recent years, Melvins’ material really hasn’t had the rebound that Boris had with new stuff like NO and Heavy Rocks III, but the acoustic remakes from 2022’s Five Legged Dog actually blew my low expectations away on songs like “Night Goat” and “Boris” in that setting especially. They lived up to the grunge bands they directly spawned and influenced after all by translating loud noise to a stripped down acoustic setting brillinatly, they’re still alive. Will I say Melvins is a better band live than last living grunge band Pearl Jam though? I don’t know, I’ve actually seen Melvins live.
Opening this show was Mr. Phylzzz, a chaotic noise rock duo from the Amphetamine Reptile record roster, the label any self respecting noisy and chaotic band would associate themselves with, such as Melvins and Boris. I didn’t see a ton of them because I was more concerned with the quite lengthy merch line. Melvins have a ton of rare LP and EP offerings and a cool selection of shirts, but they only take cash, while Boris has everything from guitar pedals and signed Polaroid pictures to their now signature branded earplugs and “Amplifier Worship Service” clergy garb. Owning plenty of Boris shirts at this point, I opted for a Melvins shirt featuring a goat with a pentagram in it’s forehead stating “in god we trust” underneath, a choice pickup much better than seeing Mr. Phylzzz. But an opening act that’s weird and disorienting like this is a par for the course thing, it’s practically an expected thing from these bands. Mr. Phylzzz dude had a really strange high pitched voice and pointed his guitar around at the crowd like a gun, I only saw the last two songs of their set and while it wasn’t the worst thing, not really anything I’d go out of my way for either. Another strange opener that did nothing for me, though it was funner sounding than Nothing from Boris’ last tour.
Bullhead is a classic album, one directly responsible for much music that directly followed it, like the Japanese unidentifiable frenzied outfit Boris. They named themselves after the song. Melvins is one of the most influential bands of all time by the way of creating later defined genres like grunge and sludge metal. If you asked many of the musicians reviewed in this article not from Melvins, they would say Melvins is an influence. I first saw Melvins live back in 2013 on what was their 30th anniversary tour as a band, and by that I mean Buzz Osbourne and Dale Crover specifically making music together. Now it’s 40 years later, Melvins are playing a 32 year old album, and Dale Crover is unable to tour for the first time ever in Melvins history due to a recent surgery. This show featured the only appropriate replacement for Dale, current High on Fire and former Melvins drummer Coady Willis. He played with the band back on that 30th anniversary tour when they did the two drummers thing, completely obliterating the ears at the time, along with fellow Big Business bassist Jarred Warren holding the low end down at the time. Now Melvins has a different full time bassist in Steven Shane McDonald, and he is way out there compared to Jarred in terms of live performance, carrying the audience interaction hard on this tour. Melvins keep this relegated to the all time classic encompassing set after playing a lot of Bullhead album tracks though. I gotta give it to Steve and Coady here, they may not have been on the Bullhead album but they can replicate the sound accurately despite not even being there and it being over 30 years since Buzz made these songs. Hearing Melvins play songs like “Ligature”, “Your Blessened” and “Cow” is fucking bizarre and awesome live and in person, it’s quite the experience. Buzz has a completely incomprehensible and phonetically oriented approach to singing and lyrics in this era, nothing makes any sense other than sounding great to the music. It’s word salad of the grunge era that goes down smooth. My favorite song off of Bullhead they played besides “Boris” was probably “Anaconda” or “Zodiac”, I especially love how at the very end of that one the only decipherable lyrics are “I forgot to take my pills”, that checks out. hearing something that raw, heavy and groundbreaking at its time live was just fucking cool as hell.
The back half of Melvins’ set was given to the all timers of the back catalogue, beginning with their mid 2000’s classic “A History of Bad Men” from the first album to feature Coady on drums in his original stint. Well here he was back and pounding away on this very rhythmic song with an extended jam intro and unexpected lead vocals from Steven, cool rendition. Following was “Honey Bucket” from Houdini and I don’t think that one really needs an introduction, it’s peak classic Melvins, fucking love it. “Revolve” was another one from Melvins short stint on the major labels in the mid 90’s and one that stands out by working an actual song structure in the mix, but it’s still unhinged and heavy enough to scare the daylights out of whatever FX TV show dared to give them airtime. Then it was time for another extended sludgy jam to lead into what’s probably my all time favorite Melvins song, “Night Goat”. This song might be 30 years old but goddammit if it doesn’t still sound as great as ever live, just a fantastic performance for this one again. Melvins saved “Boris”, Bullhead’s iconic opener for last, which was an appropriate placement as it’s live iteration these days goes way over the 8 and a half minute mark of the album version, still sounding as crushing as it ever did. When I saw Melvins the first time, which was already 10 years ago, they didn’t do any songs off of Bullhead from what I can remember and had a pretty scattershot set for a 30th anniversary tour. This time around, I think Melvins managed to be even better, easily pulling off nearly all of the Bullhead material (but skipping the song “If I Had an Exorcism” entirely for some strange reason) and highlighting some of their strongest material they’d ever done with the other cuts in the set. This music is why Melvins walked so later bands like Boris and Crowbar could run.
Boris has always had a very interesting setlist every time I’ve ever seen them. I’ve already gone on at length about their past sets I’ve seen in my review of the 2022 tour, but for a quick recap, the first time I saw Boris included a performance of “Flood”, the second time was the Pink anniversary tour with that entire album, and last year’s show highlighted the very strong recent albums NO and Heavy Rocks III. This time around was going to consist of one single legendary Boris record, the original Heavy Rocks from 2002. Heavy Rocks was Boris’ first foray into stoner metal and away from the more drone oriented material of Flood and earlier, and would earn the band wider recognition than ever before at the time. I would still say Pink is my favorite of all the many, many Boris records, but Heavy Rocks is definitely my number 2 pick for their best. Boris’ adaptation of the hazy stoner metal sounds of American bands like Kyuss, Sleep and Corrosion of Conformity (and British stoner metal gods Electric Wizard) was a strange new step for the band at the time and something it turned out they’d equally excel at. Now 21 years later and following a tour supporting the third installment in the Heavy Rocks series, it was back to the OG and man did it sound great. This time around, Boris is back to the way things usually are live, Atsuo is back behind the drum kit instead of playing frontman, as Takeshi is the main lead vocalist on the original Heavy Rocks.
In reviewing this set, it was performed in album order compared to Melvins’ mixing up of Bullhead’s actual track list, so things started with one of Boris’ strongest salvos, the incomparable “Heavy Friends”. Yes friends, this is heavy, brilliant shit, godlike riffs for days from one of metal’s most unassuming riff gods Wata. It’s also one of the only Boris songs with some English lyrics courtesy of the opening sample, but from here on out it’s going to be all Japanese, which still somehow makes more sense than Melvins’ lyrics do to me. “Korosu” is just such a fun, energetic blast of a song live too. Of all these times I’ve seen Boris, I didn’t actually ever see them do any Heavy Rocks material live until now, so the entire album is a great fucking way to make sure I hear top shelf Boris live. As always, Boris is incredibly loud live, louder than Melvins, so please don’t be like me and wear earplugs if you value and maintain your hearing capacities. “Dyna Soar” is another song that’s just a force to be reckoned with, it could easily soundtrack an AMV about giant fighting robots in space, it just nails that off kilter, upbeat, manic style of stoner metal. It’s a nice counter to the suffocating sludge of Melvins yet still makes sense at the same tour, and it’s much more lighthearted than the Crowbar and Primitive Man show to come in this article. “Wareruradio” (as it’s called on Youtube, I am certainly not typing the Japanese kanji of the actual title) is basically a hardcore/crust punk song, it’s the sort of thing that’s actually more common on the second and third Heavy Rocks albums, but it definitely fits here too. “Wario Radio” or however you say it is a cool song. But the real mood change happens next with “Soft Edge”, which is essentially a guitar solo. This is Wata’s moment to shine, and this is basically Boris’ “Maggot Brain” or “Comfortably Numb”, it’s an incredibly textured and intricate guitar solo with a lot of attention to detail, a moment of loud immense beauty that sticks out amongst a sludgy backdrop reeking of weed. Of all the very cool things to see Boris perform over the years, this was up there as amongst the ice coldest.
“Dronevil”, which is a pretty short instrumental blast of confounding noise, appropriately followed, along with the desert-esque grooves of “Rattlesnake”, another instrumental. Normally I would find playing so many instrumental songs in a row strange, but in Boris’ case, it just kinda makes sense. All three of these songs go for a very distinct and different approach from each other, and they all work. They worked on the record and goddamn did they work live too. It fucking rocks, and I can’t exactly understand a word Boris ever say live anyway. But then it was back to what is probably one of my all time favorite Boris tracks ever with “Death Valley”. This song sounds exactly like how a song named after the location of Death Valley should, it’s got that So Cal 90’s desert rock stoner metal sound down to a fucking tee. Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age and associates be damned, Boris can do that sound right up there with Homme and Brant Bjork and co. flawlessly. Boris absolutely pulls off psychedelic drug addled metal delirium up there with the finest of them all, make no mistake. The bass, drum and guitar interplay in this song is right up there with Welcome to Sky Valley’s finest moments as far as stoner metal goes. “Koei” (again, an anglicized version of the kanji title) kinda finds itself as a reprieve back to the fast, ripping rocking in it’s place in the track listing between the two longest songs. It’s a cool song that probably gets overlooked just for being placed between two of the standouts. And needing no introduction is the 8 and a half minute monolith of the album, “The Bell Tower of a Sign”, one of the highlights of Boris’ career as a whole. When discussing Boris’ stoner metal end of their wide range of sounds, “The Bell Tower of a Sign” is a go-to song emblematic of this entire realm. What begins as another hard, smooth groover of a stoner rock song quickly throws itself into oblivion after the second hook. Guitars shred and rhythms are locked into and built into an insurmountable fury, and when this is combined with Boris’ legendary live sound and volume, things get intense. Devastatingly so, it was hands down one of the single coolest songs I’ve ever seen Boris perform live. Absolutely monumental.
But let’s not forget about the last song on Heavy Rocks either, the feel good hit of the summer “1970”. No this isn’t a cover of The Stooges, it’s an original song and it’s probably the most accessible song Boris had ever made at the time. Had it been in English, it could have been a stoner rock hit ala Monster Magnet’s “Spacelord” or Corrosion of Conformity’s “Clean My Wounds”, if you ever want to try and initiate an unsuspecting new recruit unto Boris, “1970” is definitely the song to go with over “Flood” or “Vomitself”. And with that, it was yet another fun and exciting visit to a Boris live performance, always a harsh and unforgiving treat on the ears. But then Boris came back out to complete the ouroboros and ensure the flat circle of time was given it’s appropriate, cyclical ending. Boris, peforming “Boris”, a cover of the Melvins’ song with members of Melvins joining in. What a way to wrap things up with a neat little bow covered in toxic sludge and reeking of bong water, a tribute of appreciation from one legend to another together for Sludgetember.
Two weeks later, another force to be reckoned with of a tour was set to stomp it’s way through town, the legendary Crowbar with Primitive Man. I’ve seen Primitive Man, but I’ve never seen Crowbar before despite listening for quite some time now, much longer than Primitive Man has even been a band. I had first heard of Crowbar when Beavis and Butthead quite accurately called them “music for a workout tape for when you’re skinny and want to get fat” in an episode from 30 fucking years ago. That is a shockingly accurate description of the sort of riffage and sound we are dealing with when it comes to Crowbar. It was after I had listened to Acid Bath and Down that I decided to actually check out Crowbar though, and needless to say I very much enjoyed Crowbar, as I have with basically any band from the NOLA sludge scene I’ve ever heard. NOLA sludge is yet another entire musical scene and spawn directly from the influence of Melvins, a topic that I can get way too into given time. But anyway, my point is Crowbar has been around since 1990 with Kirk Windstein’s constant service as riff lord and tortured soul often going many years between albums and touring activity due to Down, and this tour also serves as a sort of 30th anniversary tour of their 1993 self titled album, the one with the songs Beavis and Butthead’s timeless commentary immortalized. Opening this tour was BodyBox, a definite pit kid band whose sound is of that slam/deathcore style and was self described by the singer as “Florida trailer park death metal”, which absolutely fits. I had actually watched a short set of theirs on Youtube from the legendary [hate5six] channel when I heard this band was opening, found it hilarious, and it was actually pretty fun live. It’s totally stupid, brain dead pit kid breakdown core with a bit of grindcore-ish approach at times, but it’s at least funny. Their songs are about Florida Man subjects like scratch off lottery tickets, gun ownership, selling drugs and microwaving weed, it’s trailer park life from Trailer Park Boys if they lived in Jacksonville and not Canada. I’ve seen and heard worse -core openers in all my years absolutely, this was hilarious but not unintentionally so, and I’d pick them over Mr. Whoeverzzzz any day.
Primitive Man on the other hand is absolutely one of the most smothering and pulverizing heavy bands to ever exist, especially so in the live setting. I saw Primitive Man live back in 2016 when they were touring with Dragged Into Sunlight at Now That’s Class, I went with a friend who was there for Dragged Into Sunlight and I was there for Primitive Man and we both had polarizing opinions about the others’ band of choice that night. I thought it was fantastic. I was an early champion of Primitive Man, naming “Loathe” one of my 15 favorite songs of 2015, and their output since has been just as gratingly slow, unflinching and repugnant to the unaccustomed as ever. In 2015, I described them as “drone grindcore doom”, and I stand by that assessment 100%. In 2023, Primitive Man is just as droning, grinding, unwelcoming and obliterating as ever. There really isn’t a casual’s entry point for Primitive Man, they are an uncompromising thing you either get it or don’t. I can tell you where to start with Melvins, Boris, Crowbar, whatever, with Primitive Man it’s a yes or no. Total fucking opposite style from Bodybox too, but I don’t think anyone who can vibe with some of the NOLA sludge scene’s rawer bands like Eyehategod couldn’t hang with Primitive Man either. The material they played was all from after the last time I’d seen them live, so hearing Caustic and Immersion stuff was absolutely awesome. “Consumption” was the opener, what a way to go in, and “My Will” followed. Now keep in mind, these are their “short” songs at 6 minutes-ish, but they are only comparable to a lava flow from a volcano in their slow yet unobstructed plod as they make their way through. Ruthless stuff. After that though, we were treated to “(infinity symbol that I’m not fucking typing)” which was what seemed like an infinite stretch of time devoted to the band dicking around on analog synthesizer equipment. This might be new for Primitive Man in the live setting, having not seen them live in almost a decade since last, but it’s not unexpected either. Noise begat noise, which led back into “Victim” and “Entity”. I am really not even bothering to describe or get people on the side of this band, again it’s subjective and it’s definitely a selective taste. I happen to really enjoy Primitive Man. They closed with “The Lifer”, the opening song from 2020’s Immersion, a nice way to juxtapose opening with the closing track of that album. Way to keep it fresh guys. My biggest takeaway from seeing Primitive Man this second time was standing directly in front of Ethan McCarthy’s amplifiers without wearing earplugs. He ranks right up there with standing in front of Wata or Matt Pike or Justin Broadrick’s amplifiers in terms of dangerously loud and stupid to do so while not wearing protection. Why do I keep doing this to myself? Because I like it. Primitive Man truly are the end result of Beavis and Butthead’s Crowbar diet, sonic excess in its purest form of obese heaviness.
Crowbar were one of the original NOLA sludge bands, formed in the late 80’s and releasing their debut album Obedience Through Suffering in 1991. Over the years, they’ve done the same shuffling of members with every other band from that scene and others, none of these bands seem to ever maintain consistent lineups, yet the same people repeatedly show up consistently. These days, nobody but Kirk Windstein remains from the lineups that made the memorable Crowbar material of the 90’s, but he was the mastermind of it anyway and they are finally touring again so who really cares about this. I’d pay top dollar to see Kirk, Jimmy Bower and Sammy Duet do a tour of that era of Crowbar for sure though. In a pro move, Kirk showed up with a corner store bag full of tall boys, set them all up on top of his amp first, and then began playing a stone cold set of classics. “Conquering” from Broken Glass opened up, great choice, a real wake up call after the smothering Primitive Man set and “High Rate Extinction” followed with the first songs on old albums theme. Crowbar do something a lot of sludge and doom metal bands don’t by not making long songs as prevalent, their straightforward approach is a strength. A random very good album cut from Crowbar’s self titled came next with “Negative Pollution”, this is another crusher as far as I’m concerned. What a churning early 90’s pit riff to start, really brings the slow nodding headbang riffs in the middle too. Up next was “I Feel the Burning Sun”, the best song from their worst album, which was released in between their best two albums, yes really. This song at least sounds like an Odd Fellows Rest B side instead of the “we made it to get out of the contract” sound of that album, I do genuinely like this song. And then next was the amusingly titled “Chemical Godz” from the newest album Zero and Below from last year. It’s actually a good song, it’s Crowbar in 2023, they’re still around. I’ll take it.
Crowbar played the only song off of Sonic Excess in Its Purest Form of the set, “To Build a Mountain” next, and that was definitely my favorite of the night so far. This era of Crowbar truly pushed their sound to exactly what the title claimed to be, and it was their original “breakup” when Kirk and Jimmy Bower went back to Down full time in 2002, Sammy Duet started Goatwhore, and a short few years later Kirk reformed Crowbar alone. “The Cemetery Angels” was next in the set, from 2011’s Sever the Wicked Hand. While I know for sure I have listened to this entire album at least one time, I do not remember this song, I’ll be honest. It sounded fine enough live for a new-ish album cut live, same with the next song from Zero and Below again. Crowbar do still have an actual new album from last year out, it was a Crowbar album and that is a good thing. “Fixation”, another song from the self titled album was next, and it again provided a pickup from the oldhead bumming vibes of new Crowbar. Crowbar’s early material provided just enough influence from hardcore to keep it from being all doom metal all the time, just in the same way the best of the NOLA scene kept it. Next was another new song, “Bleeding From Every Hole”, that’s what she said. It was rough and uncomplimentary, again that’s what she said. But after this joke title song came “All I Had (I Gave)”, their stone cold classic and inspiration for the Beavis and Butthead big fat diet plan. There was no other choice but to join into a jocular early 90’s chant of uh, huh, “all I had I gave”. I keep making dumb jokes, but Crowbar’s riffs and attitude are undeniable even as they’ve aged. They’re still worth seeing as long as they’re still retreading some of these songs.
Crowbar’s set was going to close out with what are some of the most crucial songs they’ve ever had, beginning with the incomparable “Planets Collide”. These days, this song is Crowbar’s biggest hit if they’d ever had one, the astrology worked out in their favor. This was the only song in the set from Crowbar’s other undeniable classic of NOLA sludge, Odd Fellows Rest, the album when Jimmy Bower and Sammy Duet joined. It was a very optimal, supergroup-ish era of Crowbar’s own. The new crew held it down live, and Kirk is still leading and kicking. This time it’s real indeed. Closing out was “Like Broken Glass”, which is another old school classic that emphasized the trudge through sludge emblematic of this band and everything associated with it. Drawn to the sound and taste of broken glass indeed we are all, fans of things like Crowbar.
Crowbar still had one number to finish out on, and it was the appropriately placed “Existence is Punishment”. Things really come full circle, 30 goddamn years later and I’m seeing this song I first heard of Crowbar from performed live. This is an early Crowbar classic emblematic of the NOLA sludge sound for good reason, and that’s in spite of Beavis and Butthead’s inspired dietary regimen. “This world is hard, it’s cold, it’s agony” is a great lesson to learn and the timeless miserable lyricism we’ve come to expect and appreciate from Kirk and company. We are all forever grateful to witness the riff masterclass of bands like these all.
Sludgetember was an experience. It cost me a reasonable price to see some of my favorite bands that are notoriously loud and entertaining in my favorite local venues. I’d seen many of them before multiple times and finally caught a long time favorite live for the first time at the end. Sludgetember was a great sludgecess.
VS. MusicK 