Buzz Osborne has confirmed that Melvins are planning another record with their two-drummer lineup, and that he has a separate project in the works he is not yet able to name.
The frontman covered both while speaking with Full Metal Jackie on her weekend radio show, alongside comments on the band’s collaborative album with Napalm Death and the current tour with a reunited Tomahawk.
Osborne made clear the four-piece configuration is staying, and that the next album will be shaped around it.
“We’ve played with these guys for a long time now. I really like the two drummer thing. I don’t think we’re gonna sway from that. I really like playing with Steve McDonald, who was from Redd Kross. I think he’s one of the hottest bass players out there, both the way he looks and the way he plays. So it’s a win-win. He’s a great addition and a great musician, and I could not be happier, um, in that department. And so the double drummer thing to me is difficult to do, but I think the payoff at the end is really cool,” he said (via Loudwire).
He added: “I really like it and there’s not a lot of people doing that either. And we’re gonna be doing a new record sometime soon with the double drummer lineup again and it’s going to be drum centric.”
The current lineup pairs Osborne with longtime drummer Dale Crover, second drummer Coady Willis, and Steven McDonald of Redd Kross on bass.
Asked what lies beyond the summer dates, Osborne pointed to festival appearances and then to something else entirely.
Osborne said: “We have a few other shows after that. We’re playing Sick New World festival and a few other festivals. Then we’re doing some shows that haven’t been announced yet. But not any more touring like that. Next year we got a whole bunch of stuff planned.”
“But I also have something that’s gonna get announced soon. It’s a new thing for me that we’ve been working on with some guys. I can’t tell you exactly what that is just yet, because we’re not ready to announce it yet. But when that happens, I think that you’ll really be into it.”
No further detail was offered.
Savage Imperial Death March was not a split record, and Osborne returned to that point repeatedly. Both bands wrote and played together on all eight tracks.
“Well, not being afraid to do what we just did on our newest album, which is a collaboration with Napalm Death, which is a true collaboration. It’s not like Melvins put in songs and Napalm Death put in songs. We collaborated as a band in writing the songs and recording them. And so it was really like putting a new band together with the members of both those of Melvins and Napalm Death, which I think came out. I didn’t know what it was gonna be like. I knew it was gonna be cool, but I had no idea. I also didn’t know how much material we’d come up with, because we had a limited amount of time to figure it out. So I had some material, they had some material. We combined them, figured out what we were gonna do, and then once we were done, we sent it to Barney, the singer, and he put his magic on it,” Osborne explained.
He described the sessions as free of the usual friction: “It was such a collaborative effort that I can’t remember exactly who played what on what. I know I played some bass and guitar, and I know I sang. I can tell that. And I know those guys all did that too. They all played guitar, they all played bass. And it was really like, ‘You know, we need a guitar solo in this spot.’ ‘Um, you do it.’ You know? ‘Okay.’ So it was really like that. There was no egos. We laughed our way through the whole thing. It was really fun. And then in the end, we had enough stuff for a whole album and then we gave it to Barney.”
The record began as a smaller idea. Osborne had suggested a limited EP to sell on the road; Shane Embury and John Cooke came over, and the sessions produced a full album instead. It first appeared as a tour-exclusive vinyl through Am***tamine Reptile Records in February 2025, then received a wider release on April 10 this year through Ipecac Recordings with two additional tracks, “Awful Handwriting” and “Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy“, new artwork and a twelve-page booklet by Mackie Osborne.
“And Barney added his magic to it and I think brought it to another level and it was very, very cool. And I am really proud of that record and really happy it came out on Ipecac eventually. Not just a EP that no one, not that, not that many people would ever hear,” he said.
Credits list Osborne on vocals and guitar, Crover on drums, Barney Greenway on vocals, Embury on bass and Cooke on guitar. The title comes from the two bands’ co-headlining tours in 2016 and 2025.
Osborne said he had followed Napalm Death since their first American shows in the late 1980s, and recalled the length of last year’s run together.
“I think it was 52 shows or 54 shows, something like that, in the U.S. We played literally everywhere we could. The drummer said something really funny. He was like, ‘This is about five weeks longer than I would’ve liked.’ Which I thought was really funny. But they loved it. They thought it was really fun. And they came back and did a tour this year.”
The current run has Melvins supporting Tomahawk on “A Huge Waste Of Your Time And Money“, the supergroup’s first tour since 2013 and a marker of their 25th anniversary. It opened July 18 at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville and closes with two nights at The Belasco in Los Angeles.
Tomahawk consists of Mike Patton, Duane Denison, Trevor Dunn and John Stanier. Dunn has worked with Osborne on multiple projects, including a lengthy acoustic tour.
“I’m a big fan of those guys. especially Trevor. I’ve worked with Trevor on a lot of different things. We did a big huge U.S. and European acoustic tour almost two years ago. That was great. Hope to do that again with him with on standup bass and then we’re hoping that those guys or some of those guys will jam with us onstage when we do our sets,” Osborne continued.
The two bands last shared a stage roughly two decades ago, on an Australian run that also featured Fantômas: “But we’ve all worked together a lot. I think the last time we played with Tomahawk was the better part of 20 years ago and our last show was in Sydney, Australia with them. So that was a lot of fun. That was a Melvins, Phantomas, Tomahawk tour of Australia. It was really cool. We loved it. It was really fun. That was really fun. I think I was the only person on that tour that wasn’t drinking.”
Asked whether it counted as a good tour without drinking, Osborne described his own routine on the road, doing the show, going back to the hotel, watching a film, contacting his wife, and finding a bookstore.
Melvins formed in Washington state in 1983 and released their first EP in 1986. Osborne and Crover have worked together since 1984, and at a certain point the two of them settled the question of what the band was.
“It would’ve been, the better part about 20 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, we decided that we had some trouble and we decided that whatever me and Dale were doing was Melvins. And whatever we come up with now, you were not really gonna have a solid anything. We Just leave it at that,” he recalled.
He was direct about the value he places on the musicians around him now: “It’s nice to know that I have these musicians and including Steve McDonald, who plays bass, that I can rely on and that are really good in their own right. We can make it work. To me, these guys are all top-notch musicians. I feel honored and, and privileged to have them as my side mates in a musical endeavor that has lasted me the better part of 50 years.”
The band’s most recent studio album under its own name, Tarantula Heart, arrived in 2024. They played close to 120 shows across 2025.
