The uninitiated may best know the Melvins by their creation of the dubious sub-genre known as sludge-rock. Marked by its definitional sluggishness, sludge-rock favors hard, plodding, perfect-head-banging metal over all else. It's the kind of music where you either commit to the possible whiplash that may result from such emphatic head-banging, or you just don't get it, man.

The Melvins, more than their many imitators, established an antsy desire to never fall into a predictable groove - in career trajectory as well as song structure.

Read my thoughts on this band here.

Melvins

with Totimoshi
Monday, Sept. 27, 8 p.m., $16 at brownpapertickets.com, $20 door
Hell's Kitchen, 928 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.759.6003

with Totimoshi, Bone Sickness
Wednesday, Sept. 29, 8:30 p.m., $15 Olympia Film Society members, $20 general
Capitol Theater, 206 Fifth Ave. SE, Olympia, 360.754.6670