Interviewing Buzz Osborne was, without a doubt, one of the best experiences of my lucrative career in music journalism. Sometimes, interviewing can be a real drag, me trying to pull meaningful answers out of disinterested people. What a bummer it is when you realize that someone whose music you dig turns out to be a jerk or worse–a bore. Thankfully, the frizzy-haired Melvins frontman and Fantomas guitarist proved to be a funny, engaging, and opinionated interviewee, turning what could have been a straightforward Q&A session into an hour-long phone conversation. For your sake, I’ve broken this dialogue up into two parts, the first of which appears below.

The Bride Screamed Murder, the imminent new full-length Melvins album, is the strongest work of the current Big Business-infused lineup and quite possibly the best damn record the band’s put out since the classic Houdini. Read on to learn King Buzzo’s thoughts on the new record, black metal, military cadence, and why U2 are “a bunch of pussies.”

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This Friday, the one-and-only Melvins kick off a 25th anniversary celebration at New York’s Webster Hall, where (as I’ve mentioned before) the group will perform the classic Houdini LP in its entirety, followed by a set of tracks from the founding 1983 incarnation featuring original drummer Mike Dillard. The talented Trevor Dunn, who played some shows with his new band MadLove a couple weeks ago, will fill in on bass duties as the Big Business boys are currently touring in support of the just-released Mind The Drift album. Yet incidentally there’s another former Melvin who just happens to be in the Big Apple this weekend: Joe Preston.

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