THUNDERBALL - Melvins 1983 release announced by Ipecac

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Written by brian

Created: 18 February 2025

Via FB: THUNDERBALL is coming. Are you ready? Buzz Osborne & Mike Dillard return as MELVINS 1983, unleashing THUNDERBALL—their first full-length in four years on April 18!

“Thunderball is the third Melvins 1983 record we’ve made together, and I wanted it to be bombastic. I also wanted to do something with electronic artists Void Manes and Ni Maîtres for a long time. Both of them are exceptional talents. Their out-of-the-box use of electronics pushed Thunderball beyond my expectations.” - Buzz Osborne

Album pre-orders are available now (https://themelvins.lnk.to/Thunderball), with Thunderball available on trio of vinyl variants including an indie exclusive "Smoke Is A Color" variant and an Ipecac webstore-only "Special Mustard Gas." The collection is also available on CD and all digital formats. Recorded by Toshi Kasai at Sound of Sirens.

A preview of the five-song, 34-minute album is out now, with today's release of "Victory of the Pyramids". Driven by Dillard's unrelenting cadence, the song opens with an almost deceptively poppy feel before spiraling into the crushing, sludgy depths that have long defined the MELVINS' sound. As Dillard said, it's "a lovely blend of beautiful noise and gut-busting grooves." The album was recorded by Toshi Kasai at Sound of Sirens Studios. Watch the visualizer by Jesse Nieminen at: youtu.be/rTCQ9RCXH0E

Who is Void Manes? Prior to working with us on the new THUNDERBALL album, abstract electronicist Void Manes first crossed our path on 2009’s CHICKEN SWITCH. Since then, he has played many live shows with us over several tours, and collaborated with us on the 2023 LP THROBBING JAZZ GRISTLE FUNK HITS. He has done a number of interesting things with people like Kevin Rutmanis, Mike Patton, Spotlights and others, and promises new releases this year. Follow him and check it out. http://voidmanes.bandcamp.com

What is Ni Maîtres?
Are you a sponge or a stone ? Do you like to experience all facets of life? Or do you shut yourself off from new experiences? Before contributing to the Melvins 1983 album THUNDERBALL, Ni Maîtres opened for the King Buzzo & Trevor Dunn European tour in 2024, and just released an album available on his Bandcamp. http://nimaitres.bandcamp.com

Thunderball Covert Art by Mackie Osborne

Thunderball Tracklist:

1. King of Rome
2. Vomit of Clarity
3. Short Hair With A Wig
4. Victory of the Pyramids
5. Venus Blood

Melvins and Napalm Death announce Savage Imperial Death March collab album via Amphetamine Reptile Records

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Written by brian

Created: 14 February 2025

Via FB: "Savage Imperial Death March! Previously just a co-headlining tour a few years back with Napalm Death. Well we've gone and done it now with a full length collaborative LP of new material out on AmRep Records just in time for the spring tour together!! Recorded by Toshi Kasai at Sound of Sirens."

Online Vinyl edition on sale SUNDAY 2/16, NOON CENTRAL at SHOXOP.com
Cheapy CD's are in the works. Don’t be a dumbass and miss this!

HAZE XXL sez:The title put me in a World War 1 frame of mind. The last gasp for more than a few empires and monarchies, and for anyone familiar, a fucking horror-show of humanity crushing, meat grinding tactics overseen by utterly uncaring upper class elites refusing to change disastrous and arcane warfare methods despite the millions slaughtered to no ends. At least the whole world learned from the hideous mistake and it would never be repeated!

Side A

• Tossing Coins Into the Fountain of Fuck
• Some Kind of Antichrist
• Nine Days of Rain

Side B

• Rip the God
• Stealing Horses
• Death Hour

Via AmRep: This isn't just some split release with the bands each getting a side. Savage Imperial Death March is a full collab with both Melvins & Napalm Death playing together on all 6 tracks.
This is the ALL'S Quiet on th RED Front Edition with red ink for the on our usual tan cardstock sleeve. Cover art is by HAZE XXL & silkscreened by Boxy Mouse. 3 colors on the front, four on the back.
Vinyl is clear red with orange & black splatters throughout. Catalog # is AMREP 158 

Melvins announce California Spring Break Tour 2025!

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Written by brian

Created: 16 December 2024

Via FB: What are YOU doing for SPRING BREAK? We're doing CALIFORNIA! Artist pre-sale (code: SPRINGBREAK!) starting on Wednesday at 10 a.m. pacific, general sale this Friday at 10 a.m. pacific. CNTS and Desslok open on all dates!

March 1, 2025 - Bakersfield, CA - The Nile Theater
March 2, 2025 - Fresno, CA - Strummer's
March 3, 2025 - Sacramento, CA - Goldfield Trading Post
March 4, 2025 - Santa Cruz, CA - The Catalyst
March 5, 2025 - San Luis Obispo, CA - Slow Brew Rock
March 7, 2025 - Pioneertown, CA - Pappy And Harriet's

Melvins and Napalm Death announce the return of Savage Imperial Death March!

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Written by brian

Created: 19 November 2024

Via FB: Napalm Death x Melvins: Savage Imperial Death March Returns! 

Napalm Death and the Melvins reunite this spring for the "Savage Imperial Death March Part II" tour! Openers include Weedeater, Titan to Tachyons (with Trevor Dunn), The Hard-Ons with Jerry A, & Shane Embury's Dark Sky Burial.

“Napalm Death! Melvins! What a dream! Not only are we looking forward to being on the road with our friends in Napalm Death, but we’re excited to have both Dale and Coady both on drums once again." - Buzz

This tour marks the return of Dale Crover behind the kit, and will be the first time Coady Willis will perform in tandem with Crover since 2016.

 Tickets are on-sale this Friday, Nov. 22 @ 10 AM local. Artist exclusive pre-sale on Nov. 20 at 10 AM local (Code: Stonerwitch).

Savage Imperial Death March II w/ Napalm Death and Dark Sky Burial

w/ Weedeater

April 4, 2025 - San Diego, CA - Music Box
April 5, 2025 - Santa Ana, CA - The Observatory
April 7, 2025 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall
April 8, 2025 - San Jose, CA - The Ritz
April 10, 2025 - Los Angeles, CA - The Belasco
April 12, 2025 - Las Vegas, NV - Swan Dive
April 13, 2025 - Phoenix, AZ - The Van Buren
April 14, 2025 - Tucson, AZ - Rialto Theatre
April 15, 2025 - El Paso, TX - Lowbrow Palace
April 17, 2025 - Dallas, TX - The Echo Lounge & Music Hall
April 18, 2025 - Austin, TX - Emo’s
April 19, 2025 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall – Downstairs
April 20, 2025 - Baton Rouge, LA - Chelsea’s Live
April 21, 2025 - New Orleans, LA - House of Blues New Orleans
April 23, 2025 - Tampa, FL - The Orpheum
April 24, 2025 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL - Culture Room
April 25, 2025 - Orlando, FL - The Beacham
April 26, 2025 - Savannah, GA - District Live
April 27, 2025 - Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade – Heaven Stage
April 28, 2025 - Birmingham, AL - Saturn
April 29, 2025 - Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club
May 1, 2025 - Charlotte, NC - The Underground – Charlotte
May 2, 2025 - Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle
May 3, 2025 - Virginia Beach, VA - Elevation 27
May 4, 2025 - Baltimore, MD - Baltimore Soundstage
May 5, 2025 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer

w/ Titan To Tachyons

May 6, 2025 - Allentown, PA - Archer Music Hall
May 7, 2025 - Brooklyn, NY - Warsaw
May 8, 2025 - Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
May 10, 2025 - Pittsburgh, PA - Mr .Small’s
May 11, 2025 - Cleveland, OH - Globe Iron
May 12, 2025 - Detroit, MI - Saint Andrew’s Hall
May 13, 2025 - Grand Rapids, MI - The Intersection
May 15, 2025 - Cincinnati, OH - Bogart’s
May 16, 2025 - Louisville, KY - Mercury Ballroom
May 17, 2025 - Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl Nashville
May 18, 2025 - St. Louis, MO - Red Flag
May 19, 2025 - Chicago, IL - Metro
May 20, 2025 - Milwaukee, WI - The Rave II

w/ The Hard-ons(w/ Jerry A from Poison Idea)

May 22, 2025 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
May 23, 2025 - Des Moines, IA - Wooly’s
May 24, 2025 - Kansas City, MO - Madrid Theatre
May 25, 2025 - Omaha, NE - The Waiting Room
May 27, 2025 - Denver, CO - Summit
May 29, 2025 - Salt Lake City, UT - Metro Music Hall
May 31, 2025 - Bozeman, MT - The ELM
June 1, 2025 - Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory Spokane
June 2, 2025 - Seattle, WA - The Showbox
June 3, 2025 - Portland, OR - Revolution Hall
June 4, 2025 - Eugene, OR - McDonald Theatre
June 6, 2025 - Reno, NV - Virginia Street Brewhouse
June 7, 2025 - Berkeley, CA - Cornerstone Berkeley

Dale announces Glossolalia, new solo album out Sept. 13th via Joyful Noise

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Written by brian

Created: 12 June 2024

Dale releases "Glossolalia," his third solo, full-length album, on Sept. 13 via @joyfulnoiserecs. Guests include Tom Waits, Kim Thayil, Ty Segall, Dan Southwick and Rob Crow. Produced by Toshi Kasai and Dale.
Check out the newly released song and video for "Doug Yuletide":

Grab a copy of the limited-edition vinyl, on either Hot Pink or"Lickety Split Pink," with only 400 hand-numbered copies (w/bonus flexi-disc) available: http://dalecrover.lnk.to/Glossolalia

As he began plotting his new solo album, Dale Crover realized he was starting from scratch. The Melvins, Nirvana and Redd Kross drummer, and Altamont singer-guitarist, was already more than 30 years into a world-renowned musical career when he started work on what became his full-length solo debut — 2017’s The Fickle Finger of Fate — so he had a backlog of songs and ideas to draw on. Likewise, he incorporated older material into Rat-A-Tat-Tat!, which followed in 2021. But this time around it was different: just Crover and a Tascam 8-track gifted to him by Joyful Noise founder Karl Hofstetter.

“I didn’t have any songs,” Crover says. “So I just went on this writing spree.”

The result of that creative burst is Glossolalia, Crover’s third LP under his own name and arguably his most focused statement yet as a solo artist: 11 catchy yet eccentric tracks — demoed at home and later re-recorded with longtime Melvins engineer Toshi Kasai — that move from Nuggets-y garage rock to crafty proto-metal riffage and gorgeously hazy psych-pop, and feature Crover’s songwriting, vocals and multi-instrumental talents alongside a number of illustrious guests, from past collaborators like Ty Segall to none other than Tom Waits. Crover’s prior Joyful Noise releases, including a set of lathe-cut singles that doubled as surreal art objects, took a more experimental tack, blending in oddball textural interludes along with more straightforward songs. This time, the sound is streamlined, with a natural flow that carries the listener straight through from the rollicking album-opening title track to eerily evocative closer “Punchy.” “Just having everything kind of fresh,” Crover says of the project as a whole, “I got really inspired.”

Crover found the seeds of these new songs in everything from his teenage memory banks to books and films he recently checked out. The idea for “Glossolalia” itself came from a surreal experience Crover had in high school, when he got roped into playing drums at a church.

“They’re doing this service and it’s starting to get kind of crazy: ‘Praise the Lord; praise Jesus!’” Crover recalls. Spotting one of his classmates in attendance, he was surprised to find her participating in a particularly intense way. “All of a sudden, she starts freaking out and speaking in tongues,” Crover says. “I was minding my own / You came along / Spoke with your tongue,” he sings on the track that grew out of the incident, a jangly stop-start rocker on which Crover plays guitar, bass and drums, with Kasai adding in groovy, surf-rock-style keyboard.

Crover wanted to kick the track off with some actual glossolalia (the dictionary term for speaking in tongues), and at first he or Kasai was going to do the honors. But Kasai’s offhand mention that he might have an in with Tom Waits’ manager got the pair thinking that, as Crover recalls, “It might be weird enough that he would do it.” Word came back that Waits was game, and just before the album was set to be mastered, he sent in two fragments of brilliantly bizarre wordless mouth sounds that Crover and Kasai ended up layering on top of each other, one in each channel. “We were like, ‘Fuck, they’re both really good,’” Crover says with a laugh. “‘We’ve got to use both.’”

Two other tracks, “Doug Yuletide” and “Punchy,” were collaborations with guitarist Dan Southwick, Crover’s longtime friend and Altamont bandmate. “He’s one of those guys that’s always been really easy to write songs with,” Crover says. “Doug Yuletide” — the title of which mashes up the name of Velvet Underground member Doug Yule with a nod to the holiday season in which it was written — pairs Southwick’s rolling midtempo riffs with a tale that Crover describes, in another Velvets hat-tip, as a “vampire-story ‘Venus in Furs.’” “Punchy,” meanwhile, is a swirling sonic tapestry matched with lyrics inspired by a dream Southwick had and related to Crover (“It seems so strange / To be sitting here telling you these things / ‘Cause in my dream / You were wearing purple and green”), and a suitably trance-like vocal delivery from Crover.

Rob Crow, of indie-rock institution Pinback, perverse grindcore act Anal Trump and countless other projects, contributes guitar and backing vocals to another beautifully melancholy selection, “Don’t Worry About It.” The song — for which Crover took musical cues from the Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping” — deals with anxiety about the future, and how “things always seem to work out no matter what.” Crow also turns up on “I’ve Waited Forever,” a hooky, moody power-pop-esque rocker that touches on control, a theme that surfaces throughout the record in various forms, (whether “being in control, out of control, or controlling,” Crover explains). Liquid-toned lead guitar from Ty Segall ups the song’s stakes. “He’s such a good player,” Crover says of Segall, who also graces “Spoiled Daisies,” a crunchy, riffy track inspired by a bad teenage mushroom trip. “He came in and just did it in a few hours.”

Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, a die-hard Melvins fan since the band’s earliest days, lets loose on both “I Quit” and “Rings,” adding squealing and soaring psychedelic shred, respectively. Crover channeled Gary Numan when singing the former, another song dealing with the theme of control, while he touched on hardboiled-crime-fiction territory, reminiscent of writer Jim Thompson, for “Rings,” a vaguely sinister character sketch whose armed, jailhouse-tatted, “overserved” protagonist seems out to do harm.

“Jane,” with its shimmy-friendly bounce, shows off Crover’s lighter side. Just before the death of singer-actor Jane Birkin last year, Crover had been immersing in 1960s French culture, including yé-yé pop sounds and La Piscine, a psychological thriller that she co-starred in, so he framed the song as a tribute to her: “All the men try to win her over,” he sings. “But they just get the cold shoulder.” (When Crover played a demo of the track for Buzz Osborne, his Melvins bandmate likened it to the taut pop-rock of the Knack.)

Meanwhile, “Kitten Knife” — an alternately stomping and subtle track that features Crover’s own righteous guitar leads, a reminder that the six-string was actually his first instrument — stemmed from a recent reading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and “Blow’d Up,” marked by a mambo-like drum groove and a fist-pumping chorus, grew out of reflections on relationship dynamics.

Taken as a whole, Glossolalia shows that, just as the Melvins continue to grow and evolve into their fourth decade, Crover is actively taking new steps as a solo artist. Amid the inspired babbling of Waits, the glorious shredding of Segall and Thayil, and more, what stands out across the record is the sturdiness of Crover’s vision. He’s modest about his ambitions — “It’s just kind of like extra credit,” he says, about having a solo outlet apart from his main band — but as this record shows, his overall aesthetic hits just as hard as his legendary drum thunder.

✨ Catch Dale on tour this Summer, playing an acoustic set on all Redd Kross dates and headlining a limited number of Dale Crover Band shindigs as well:

Read more: Dale announces Glossolalia, new solo album out Sept. 13th via Joyful Noise