Melvins, Big Business, (Men Of) Porn - The Ultimate Package

After seeing this triple package last year on the Roadburn festival, I really had the taste for more. For this reason we were present to witness this package once again. One thing that makes this package unique is the fact that the 3 bands playing that evening are about 10 the same people. Sharing the same backline and the same stage. More bands and packages should consider doing this. Slipknot should rethink their tour-strategy and bring along Stone Sour and Murderdolls for instance.

(Men Of) Porn
Men Of Porn, or nowadays just Porn, is in fact an experimental band from Dale Crover, Billy Anderson and Tim Moss. The music they make as well as their line-up, changes with every record and show they do. This was the third time I’ve seen them and every time in a different setting and with additional musicians. That’s why you can see Billy Anderson play guitar at one show and play bass and noise-effects during another show. This time they got the help of both the Big Business musicians during their 30 minutes of improvised noise jam-session. In fact this time it was just one big long 30 minute noisy jam-session, with the accessional stoner/doom-riff. The times it got interesting was when Billy Anderson started a heavy doom-riff on his guitar, but it lasted too short to become really interesting. The show I’ve seen a year ago was way better than this improvised noise-fest! (RoyBalowski)

Big Business
This was my first encounter with the duo called Big Business, who are also the other half of main act Melvins. Just a bassist and a drummer, that’s all this band works with. Yet this is a formidable force, as the severely distorted bass guitar throws out swinging rock grooves and the drummer packs some intense bashing power. That combined, creates a nice experimental rock band. The vocals are handled by the bassist, but they didn’t sound too convincing this evening. Yet the performance was very entertaining and convincing, it’s sort of a primitive form of a Mastodon rock band, or High On Fire if you like. Especially the intense Mastodon-like drumwork lifts this band to a higher level. The guest guitar-, vocal- and drum performances of Melvins’ Dale Crover gave the band an even better sound. All in all a very cool show to watch. (DemonDust)

Melvins
Some time ago the two remaining Melvins members added the two guys from Big Business to their ranks, which means they have two drummers, a bassist and a guitarist, and all four handle vocals. Although King Buzzo of course takes care of the lion’s share of the vocals. Melvins took the stage with supreme force I have to say. I can’t really think of another rock band that can bring such high quality and such a high level of musicianship. They played very few classics but quite a lot from the last two records; A Senile Animal and Nude With Boots. Because the Big Business drummer is left handed and Melvins’ Dale Crover is right handed, they decided it would be cool to merge two drums together and play over the same stuff in the middle. If you think that’s awesome already, you should see what they do to it! The two guys feel each other’s moves perfectly, grooving under those heavy rock riffs like a pair of sledgehammers. The force they beat it with is tremendous (even though the Big Business drummer was actually playing his third set of the evening)! The sound of the bass and guitar rumbled over this percussive violence, while King Buzzo spilled his bizarre lyrics over the crowd. An utterly brilliant performance which has made me a permanent and devoted fan of these guys. If you want REAL rock, check these guys out, preferably live. (DemonDust)