‘Grease Box’: The forgotten grunge song that deserves to be a classic
Amid the grunge whirlwind that upended rock charts across the early 1990s, an entire eco-system of like minded plaid punks became overshadowed by the movement’s ‘Big Four’.
It’s hard to steer clear of well-trodden, narrative embellishment of Washington state’s sleepy logging city’s sudden thrust to the global musical map, but the thriving Seattle underground indeed burst like a broken dam all over the US Billboard, snuffing spandex hair metal and twangy power ballads virtually overnight once Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ had been unleashed in September 1991. Dropping its Nevermind album a few weeks later, no one was more surprised than frontman Kurt Cobain when their sophomore LP knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous from the number one top spot.
Yet, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam didn’t materialise in a vacuum. A potent indie wave had began rearing its head toward the end of the 1980s scored by the likes of Pixies, Sonic Youth, and Hüsker Dü, winking at the major labels and showing that money could be made from the alternative fringes. Alongside this rock scale shifting, Seattle was whirring away with a litany of bands all unwittingly coaxing the grimy brew of lo-fi metal and punk attack, from Soundgarden’s early genesis to the Mudhoney and Pearl Jam predecessor outfit Green River. A year later, famed Sub Pop label would launch in the city, and Skin Yard’s Jack Endino would trigger a string of production work that helped cement the so-called grunge sound.
Amid this musical tumult was Tad. A Monononymous moniker for H-Hour’s Tad Doyle, early efforts under Sub Pop’s fledgling roster conjured a heavy and leaden metal bludgeon against Tad’s guttural bellow, soundtracking his darkly humorous lyrical paths down tales of serial killers, drink driving, and weird amputation.
Tad were swiftly slapped with a major label deal. Accelerated by Nevermind’s shock surprise, Tad suddenly found themselves in the care of Warner Bros’ Giant Records offshoot, sharing the same roster as MC Hammer and teen pop star Jeremy Jordan. Heading to California’s Studio D and recruiting Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis for production duties, Tad dropped 1993’s Inhaler, an overlooked alternative metal gem from the grunge wave eclipsed by the ‘Big Four’, despite having toured with Nirvana and Soundgarden at the time.
Promoting the record with President Bill Clinton holding an oversized joint and exclaiming “It’s heavy shit”, Inhaler blasted another gargantuan hack of blistering metal and oily groove, but expanded a little with sharper pop hook amid the mulching punk sludge. Among a cluster of fantastic cuts like ‘Throat Locust’ and ‘Leafy Incline’, album opener ‘Grease Box’ perfectly illustrates the record’s belligerent splutter. Released as a single in Australia but merely a low-key promo elsewhere, ‘Grease Box’ flexes former Bundle of Hiss bassist Kurt Danielson’s gift for serrated funk against the chugging guitar and Tad’s shredding vocals, fizzing together with a stinging eccentricity echoing slices of doom from fellow ‘Toners’ Melvins.
As ever, Tad casts a lyrical picture of ambiguous threat to ‘Grease Box’s spitting menace. “Like the little beast in a smokened room / Sat writhing in pain all afternoon / Salt from his tears bringing the blood to the surface / Like dark haired fears make their way to the surface” Tad gobs, a strange examination of one’s private demons and the myriad forms they gnaw in the psyche. While the depiction is unclear, lines like “Just the sight of the belt makes his kids start to sting” point to another of Tad’s pulpy obsessions with closed-door violence that permeate much of his wryly evil songbook.
Whatever it’s about, ‘Grease Box’ stands as a grubby gem from grunge’s closing chapter, a fine hour from Tad that deserves as much acclaim as any of the Big Four at their most raucous and swelteringly, unremittingly loud.
