Melvins Announce New Album ‘Basses Loaded’ With Special Guest Krist Novoselic + More

The Melvins are gearing up for two new albums, Three Men and a Baby and Basses Loaded. The latter boasts a song with former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, and according to frontman Buzz Osborne, it would have never come to fruition if another collaboration with Dave Grohl hadn't fallen through.

Basses Loaded is due out June 3 via Ipecac Recordings, and it features six different bassists. Osborne and company recruited Redd Kross’ Steve McDonald, Butthole Surfers’ Jeff Pinkus, Fantômas’ Trevor Dunn and Novoselic for their latest full-length. Listen to the McDonald-featured "Hideous Woman" at the top of the page.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, the ever plain-spoken Osborne revealed the song with Novoselic was the result of a Melvins-Nirvana collaboration that never came to be:

It was before [the surviving members of Nirvana] played with Paul McCartney. Dave Grohl had said that he wanted to do… Nirvana songs with the Melvins, and maybe have David Yow [Scratch Acid, the Jesus Lizzard] singing. So Krist Novoselic came down and we started rehearsing, and Dave was supposed to show up -- and he just never showed up. Blew it off, totally. And it was his idea! I didn’t appreciate that, you know? I’m a lot of things, but one thing I’m not doing is sitting next to the phone in curlers, waiting for Dave Grohl to call me, you know? When he totally blows you off like that, it’s f---ed. But whatever. There’s nothing I can do about that. So we did some recording with Krist while he was there.

Osborne managed a dig at Grohl’s recent Oscars performance, too: “Generally when I come up with an idea for something and it’s my idea, and people fly down there on their own dime, which is what Krist did, and then you leave him hanging,” Osborne said. “That’s not something I’m known for. But Dave, he’s busy playing songs at the Oscars and s---.”

Osborne also doubled down on his controversial comments on last year’s Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck, which he called “total bulls---”:

When you’re going to sit there and talk about a guy that I knew back then, and you’re going to say that kind of stuff, you better be able to back it up. And I’m telling you right now, that’s a bunch of bulls---. You think I’m going to go along with this idea that you guys are putting out there, that Kurt Cobain raped a mentally retarded teenager? That’s not true. That is not true. But it makes for a better story.

Before Basses Loaded, the Melvins will release the long-lost Three Men and a Baby, a collaboration with Godheadsilo’s Mike Kunka that dates back to 1999. That’s slated for an April 1 release via Sub Pop.