This San Francisco-based band has certainly written some of the stranger music of the last two decades, but then again, we've all been living in one of the stranger worlds for the last two decades (most of us anyway).

The Melvins - that sounds like someone has left their instruments leaning against their amps turned up all the way and went out for a quick bite to eat - is actually a group of three people doing some pretty neat de-composing. Some people have come up with the term "Meta-Metal" to describe the music. It's slow, the songs are up to 20 minutes long and there are no show-off guitar-solos (a fact for which they may be rated amongst the altogether more cool bands on this planet). The Melvins have re-defined songwriting up to a degree where tempo, beat and structure of a song are no longer recognizable - and neither are the lyrics. Of course there is a change and progression in style and music on their countless records: not all of them have the same bone-grinding, ultra-slow metal contents as the early records. The most recent ones have a very definite amount of "pop" in them, but they have a Melvins signature written all over them all the same. Some records, or at least songs, could even be considered "avant-garde". If you're looking for something different, the Melvins are definitely worth a try.

The Melvins are: Buzz Osbourne, Guitar; Dale Crover, Drums; and there's currently no bass player (they have been through quite a large number of bass players since the founding of the band). Originally based in Seattle, they were friends of the late Kurt Kobain ( who played guitar on one song on the "Houdini" album), and Dale played drums on some of the songs on Nirvana's less well known debut album "Bleach".

A rather incomplete discography is: Gluey Porch Treatments (1986), Ozma (1989), Bullhead (1991), Lysol (1992), Houdini (1993), Prick (very strange indeed) (1994), Stoner Witch (1994), Stag (1996), Honky (1997).