Buzz Osborne on the band who “simultaneously destroyed and reinvented rock and roll”
Despite misgivings about the mantle, there’s truth to Melvins frontman Buzz Osbourne’s ‘Godfather of grunge’ label. Forming the band in 1982 in Washington’s Montesano, their initial hardcore punk gave way to a slower, heavier, and detuned variant of alternative metal after drummer Dale Crover’s joining that pricked the ears of Seattle’s musical subterranean 100miles northwest. A hero to Kurt Cobain, it was Osborne who introduced a young Dave Grohl fresh from his previous band, Scream’s disbandment, to Nirvana in search of a new drummer.
While leaving an indelible mark on grunge, Osborne’s sludgy riffage has found its way across an eclectic scope of work, founding the experimental Fantômas with Faith No More’s Mike Patton, and further collaborations with Lustmord, Tool, Red Kross, and Jello Biafra. Even Melvins’ voluminous discography touches on a broad range of influences, jumping between jazz-rock, cowpunk, and electronic music.
With this keen taste for the unorthodox, Osborne dropped some intriguing choices as to his personal favourite grunge albums. In addition to listing two records each from Nirvana and Soundgarden, the little-known Californian hardcore punk band Tales of Terror’s sole album made his personal grunge list.
“They were an extraordinary band. I saw them before I heard the record, and I thought they were really, really, really good,” Osborne told Rolling Stone in 2019. “It was pretty much exactly the kind of punk-rock thing I wanted. They had a simultaneous destruction and reinvention of their music. And you could tell their influences were really cool, like The Stooges and the Dead Boys with some hardcore thrown in there. And they had a psychedelic edge to it that I thought was amazing.”
Formed in 1983 from the aftermath of Sacramento’s The Square Cools, Tales of Terror quickly became one of the West Coast’s most prominent underground bands, playing with the likes of Dead Kennedys, Fang, Social Distortion, and all adopting gleefully irreverent aliases: Rat’s Ass, Dusty Coffin, and Emperor Fuckshit to name a few.
Happy to spike their punk with rock showmanship and an unabashed love for rockabilly’s feral energy, their sets were the sites of wild theatrics, including backflips from the stage and wrapping each other up in duct tape at the end of their sets. In the crowd at one of their legendary gigs was Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, who would tell Exclaim in 2008 that witnessing Tales of Terror was one of the most inspirational gigs he’d ever seen.
Unfortunately, they only ever dropped one LP, their eponymous effort in 1984 on the CD Presents indie label. Tragically, in 1986, guitarist Lyon Wong died of head trauma following an altercation with a truck full of teenagers near P St’s The Zebra Club. He was announced dead on arrival at Sutter General Hospital after hitting the pavement. Opting not to continue, the various members drifted into other bands, none ever reaching the attention of Tales of Terror.
Their influence would later be recognised by Cobain, including Tales of Terror in his ‘Top 50 Albums‘ diary entry, and Osborne was effusive in his praise of the little-known hardcore outfit. “This record would be in my top 20 albums of all time if not top ten. We’ve covered a couple of songs on it, and we may cover more in the future. It was certainly a big influence on me and the Mudhoney guys.”
