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MATT LUKIN After a while, we were like, “We need to find another drummer. Do you know anybody?” So Krist took us around and introduced us to a couple of friends of his who played drums.

Actually, the first guy he introduced us to was Aaron Burckhard—later he played drums for Nirvana—and within two minutes of meeting him, we realized, That guy isn’t going to work out. It was just his personality. And what was going on in the back house—there were a bunch of “Hey, dude!”s partying: “Hey, dude!” Plus, he had a mustache. Having a big, bushy Tom Selleck mustache just meant you were trying to be something you weren’t.

BUZZ OSBORNE What I wanted was a heavy-metal drummer. I wanted somebody who was going to push the band beyond belief. Like a freight train, a combination of Keith Moon and the guy from Iron Maiden.

MATT LUKIN Then Krist took us over to meet Dale. He was just some freaky high school kid who was a great drummer. He looked like a long-haired metal dude.

DALE CROVER (Melvins/Nirvana drummer) Before the Melvins, I played in a band called Rampage. Even though they liked other rock stuff that I liked, it was kind of like, “Oh, we have to play this Eddie Money song. We have to play ballads.”

Rampage got this opportunity to play on a Christmas benefit radio program for this group of mentally handicapped adults called the Sunshine Kids. So we go down there, at the Elks Hall in downtown Aberdeen, and this band’s already playing. They were the Melvins. The other guys in my band were going, “What the fuck is this shit?” And I was like, “I don’t know, it’s kind of cool. And they’re playing their own songs.” They played super-fast, they’re loud as shit, and they just blasted one song into another.

BUZZ OSBORNE I had seen Crover play in a cover band—Loverboy stuff, crap, garbage—and I thought that he was a good drummer. When Krist mentioned him, I went, “Oh, yeah,” so we went to talk to him. When Crover joined the band, he was a do-nothing stiff. I think he quit high school after doing 11th grade for the second time.

DALE CROVER The guidance counselor said, “It looks like you know what you want to do already.” Basically I’d started touring with the Melvins—we’d been doing shows on weekends. He was like, “My advice is to drop out, because you’re gone all the time, so you’re just going to fail anyway.”

DAN PETERS (Mudhoney/Nirvana/Screaming Trees/Feast/Bundle of Hiss drummer) Dale was this kid with a furry-lined Levi’s jacket and long scraggly hair. His drum sets were always cobbled together with these odd-shaped and -sized drums. Everything was a different make and model, held together with baling wire. He’d just pound the shit out of the skins.

MATT LUKIN Dale was really into speed metal at the time. Which was kind of funny, in the sense that the Melvins were slowing down: “Everyone’s playing a hundred miles an hour, let’s slow things down. Freak people out.”

DALE CROVER The idea to slow down came pretty much from Black Flag’s My War, side two. Side two of that record is all of these slow songs, which their fanbase didn’t like because they wanted faster stuff to mosh to.

BUZZ OSBORNE We certainly liked My War, but I don’t know if it’s the one that made us decide to slow down. I actually saw Black Flag on that same tour with this band Saccharine Trust, and they were every bit as slow, and weirder. They were hugely influential as far as atmosphere.

We slowed down, but I always thought that was just another thing that we were doing. We always played fast—always. People get hung up on us playing slow. Whenever I see journalists writing “sludgecore … Melvins”—yeah, that’s true, if you listen to about 20 percent of our stuff. That means that they don’t have any concept of what we’re really doing.

DALE CROVER I’d also played with this guitar player named Larry Kallenbach in a band called Special Forces. He had an influence on the Melvins for sure, because he taught Buzz how to tune down to D. That was the Black Sabbath trick. “Into the Void” was tuned down to D.