Original: Article:
http://blog.indiepit.com/2009/07/21/exclusive-melvins-side-project-altamont-ready-to-mount-a-comeback/
[Why are there five guys in this promo pic but only three in the band? Because Dale Crover is a strange duck, that's why.]
Last week, we chatted up Karim over at I’m Better Than Everyone Else Records, a vinyl-only, more or less one-man operation with a fetish for underground Southern metal. If the imprint rings a bell, it might be because we told you earlier this month about a US Christmas live record it’ll be dropping later this year.
We’ll have an “Inside the Label” profile on I’m Better Than Everyone Else soon enough, but in the interim, we didn’t want to sit on some exclusive news he gave to us.
As usual, Melvins have a calendar loaded with shows. On Saturday, they’ll be hitting up a ski resort in Niigata, Japan - no, we’re not kidding; that’s where the Fuji Rock Festival is happening. On August 7 and 9, the weirdos will swing through San Jose, California, and Eugene, Oregon, respectively. And then, from August 11 through August 22, they’ll be opening for Down.
They also have that wacky remix album - featuring Lee Ranaldo, Matmos and Merzbow - coming September 29.
But because this is the Melvins, you might guess they’re up to a whole lot more no good than just that. And you would guess right.
Amid the touring activity - still in support of 2008’s Nude With Boots - Dale Crover has found time to step away from the skins and strap on a guitar for his Altamont affair with drummer Dan Southwick and bassist Joey Osbourne (no relation to Buzz Osborne). The three stooges all have affiliations with red-eyed San Fran outfit Acid King: Osbourne has sat behind the kit ever since the band formed in 1993; Crover contributed vocals to its debut, which dropped the following year; and Southwick played with them for three years.
Altamont have four albums to their name: three on Man’s Ruin and one on Ipecac offshoot AntAcidAudio.
(Go here for the band’s amusing, fact-free “biography”.)
Last we heard from Altamont - which, you might be surprised to hear, sound like a cross between Melvins and Acid King - was almost four years ago, when they let loose The Monkees’ Uncle. But if all goes as planned, they’ll be crawling out from the rock again before year’s end.
“That hasn’t been talked about at all yet,” Karim confessed to IndiePit. “We’re doing a double album with them.”
Like all I’m Better releases - which are limited edition - a firm release date hasn’t been set and probably won’t be. But Karim sounded confident the effort will be seeing the light of day before the close of ‘09.
He did have a wee bit more info to share: “I only just got a track list, and I don’t know how far along the art is yet. But it’s Buzz’s wife, Maggie Osborne - who does a lot of Melvins art. She’s going to be doing the art on Altamont’s new one.”
We don’t know the album title yet but strongly suggest they go with Stonerhenge, My Tongue Tastes Like Paper or I’m Inside a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here.
We’re also SOL on the Altamont MP3 front, but we do have this Nude With Boots download still kicking around:
