When it comes to heavy music, my preference is for it to be slow, heavy, and abrasive. I was not attracted to metal for flashy guitar solos and theatrical vocals. Of the myriad of subgenres in heavy music, my favorite is sludge metal. Music of this style takes the slow, down-tuned aspects of heavy metal music and combines them with the aggression of punk rock. One of the early practitioners of this style was the Melvins. Guitarist Buzz Osborne started the Melvins when he was in high school, playing fast hardcore punk music in the style of Black Flag. That all changed when Black Flag released My War in 1984, and slowed tempos down to a crawl on the second half of the album, in the vein of Black Sabbath. Osborne and drummer Dale Crover began to experiment with slower music themselves and helped give birth to sludge metal and drone metal. In the band’s almost 40 years of existence, they have released a lot of albums and have experimented widely with sounds and styles, though it is primarily for their slow and heavy material that they are known.
a music blog: alternative country, rock, hardcore punk, metal
