Hear Lost Melvins Sub Pop Album With Godheadsilo’s Mike Kunka
On April 1, art-rock sludge factory the Melvins and Sub Pop Records are unearthing Three Men and a Baby, the band’s lost album recorded with bassist/vocalist Mike Kunka of North Dakota noise-rockers Godheadsilo. The album was initially recorded in 1999 during a prolific creative period where the Melvins released a trilogy of albums for the new Ipecac Records within 10 months.
“Now, the funny thing about that is, and you can’t really tell, there’s almost no guitar on it,” leader Buzz Osborne told Rolling Stone about the previously unheard sessions. “I’m doing all the low-end bass, Kevin [Rutmanis, circa-1999 Melvins bassist is] doing all the slide bass and Mike’s doing all the stuff that sounds like guitar. The whole idea was it was going to be three bass players. We got as far as we could get with that, and then it was time for him to do a bunch of vocals, and he just couldn’t figure out what he was going to do, so he said, “I’ll just take them home with me and then I’ll finish them.” And we never heard from him again. Just disappeared. Literally disappeared. Like phones disconnected. We heard that he moved out into the woods, then we heard some wild story about him getting whooping cough, which I was like, what is it, 1930?”
Kunka recently got ahold of Melvins drummer Dale Crover and the band agreed to revisit the sessions with producer Toshi Kasai — adding some vocals and guitars to a record Osborne estimates was 85 percent finished.”
The result is a twisted 12-track noise-pop monster that marks the Melvins’ first Sub Pop release in the band’s 33-year career — pre-order it on vinyl, CD or cassette via the label site. Hear the whole below.