So you slept on snagging tickets to the Melvins show June 16 at the Pyramid Scheme. And, like clockwork, it sold out quickly. Well, we’ve got the next best thing: a conversation with guitarist/vocalist Buzz Osborne, the heavy-as-hell sludge band’s chief songwriter. 

King Buzzo chatted about the band’s latest LP, Hold It In, which features Osborne and drummer Dale Crover – but also Butthole Surfers members Paul Leary (guitar) and bassist JD Pinkus. The veteran doom band is also reissuing Electroretard on June 2 – it will be packaged with The Bulls & The Bees EP. Here’s what Osborne had to say.

Throughout the mid-to-late ‘90s, the ethereal image of a long-haired and lanky Marilyn Manson squirming about on stage while shouting about sodomy engrossed rebellious teens — but more importantly it horrified worrywart parents. That’s a trick from the ol’ Alice Cooper playbook: Terrify old people and the kids will flock to it.

Life on tour agrees with Colony House, and things have only gotten better since the group found a sound representational of its true inspirations. Since two of the members are children of Steven Curtis Chapman, a Grammy-Award winning Christian singer-songwriter, the pressure from record labels to head in their father’s direction could have nudged Colony House to follow someone else’s vision. But the trio has ultimately played to their strengths to churn out melodic, guitar-driven indie rock. 

More than a decade after hitchhiking his way out of small town Illinois, singer-songwriter Pokey LaFarge has come to proudly embrace his Midwestern roots. Fresh-faced and 17, LaFarge left home in 2001 with little more than a mandolin, an honest appreciation for American history – both musical and otherwise – and the sort of audacious ambition only greats like Hemingway and Kerouac can rouse in a young man.