The group consist of Chad Gray (lead vocals), Greg Tribbett (guitar, vocals), Ryan Martinie (bass guitar) and Matthew McDonough (drums). Formed in 1996, Mudvayne became popular in the late-1990s Decatur, Illinois underground music scene. The band released an EP, Kill, I Oughtta, in 1997 and a successful debut album, L.D. 50, in 2000. They had global success with The End of All Things to Come, Lost and Found and The New Game, the band went on hiatus in 2010 and reunited in 2021.
The band was inactive since 2010, with its members performing in other projects and making guest appearances. Chad Gray is the vocalist for the heavy metal supergroup Hellyeah, to which Greg Tribbett was also a member until 2014. Gray founded an independent record label, Bullygoat Records, which produces heavy-metal albums. In early 2015, Chad Gray noted that the band's return seemed very unlikely, unless "everybody licked their wounds and got over it".
Early days (1996–97)
Mudvayne, formed in 1995 in Bloomington, Illinois, originally consisted of bassist Shawn Barclay, guitarist Greg Tribbett and drummer Matthew McDonough. The band's original lineup finalized when Chad Gray, who was earning $40,000 a year in a factory, quit his day job to become its singer. In 1997 Mudvayne financed its debut EP, Kill, I Oughtta.
During the EP's recording Barclay was replaced by Ryan Martinie, former bassist for the progressive-rock band Broken Altar. After self-distributing Kill, I Oughtta, Mudvayne adopted stage names and face paint.
L.D. 50 (1998–2000)
In April 1998 local promoter Steve Soderstrom introduced Mudvayne to its original manager, Chuck Toler, who helped obtain a contract with Epic Records and record the 2000 debut studio album L.D. 50. For the album, Mudvayne experimented with a ragged, dissonant sound; a sound collage, prepared for the album, was used as a series of interludes. L.D. 50 was produced by Garth Richardson, with executive production by Slipknot member Shawn Crahan.
L.D. 50 peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart and No. 85 on the Billboard 200. The singles "Dig" and "Death Blooms" peaked at No. 33 and No. 32 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Although the album was praised, some critics found the band hard to take seriously.
To promote L.D. 50, Mudvayne played on the Tattoo the Earth tour with Nothingface, Slayer, Slipknot and Sevendust. Nothingface guitarist Tom Maxwell became friends with Mudvayne vocalist Chad Gray, and they explored the possibility of a supergroup. The following year, Nothingface again toured with Mudvayne; although plans for a supergroup continued, they were put on hold due to scheduling conflicts. Gray and Maxwell had discussed five names for the group, and Mudvayne guitarist Greg Tribbett approached Maxwell "out of the blue" to join it. Although Nothingface drummer Tommy Sickles played on the group's demo, the search for another drummer began.
The End of All Things to Come (2001–02)
In 2002 Mudvayne released The End of All Things to Come, which the band considers its "black album" due to its largely-black artwork. Isolation inspired the album's songs. During its mixing, Gray and McDonough stopped at Bob's Big Boy and Gray remembered overhearing someone "say something like, ' ... and he's got to cut his own eye out'". When he asked McDonough if he heard the conversation McDonough said he hadn't, and Gray thought it was someone discussing a scene from a screenplay.
The album expanded on L.D. 50, with a wider range of riffs, tempos, moods and vocals. Because of this experimentation, Entertainment Weekly called this album more "user-friendly" than its predecessor and it was one of 2002's most acclaimed heavy-metal albums. The music video for the single "Not Falling" demonstrated the Mudvayne's change in appearance from L.D. 50, with the musicians transformed into veined creatures with white, egg-colored bug eyes.
Lost and Found (2003–05)
In 2003 Mudvayne participated in the Summer Sanitarium Tour, headlined by Metallica, and in September Chad Gray appeared on V Shape Mind's debut studio album Cul-De-Sac. The following year the band began work on its third album, produced by Dave Fortman. As for the previous album, Mudvayne withdrew to write songs; they moved into a house, writing the album in four months before recording began. In February Gray and Martinie expressed an interest in appearing on Within The Mind - In Homage To The Musical Legacy Of Chuck Schuldiner, a tribute to the founder of the metal band Death, but the album was never produced.
In 2005 Chad Gray established independent record label Bullygoat Records and Bloodsimple's debut album, A Cruel World (with a guest appearance by Gray), appeared in March. On April 12, Mudvayne released Lost and Found. The album's first single, "Happy?", featured complex guitar work and Gray described "Choices" as "the eight-minute opus".
In August former Mudvayne bassist Shawn Barclay released his band Sprung's debut album, mastered by King's X guitarist Ty Tabor. That month rumors spread that Bullygoat Records would release We Pay Our Debt Sometimes: A Tribute to Alice in Chains, with performances by Mudvayne, Cold, Audioslave, Breaking Benjamin, Static-X and the surviving members of Alice in Chains. A spokesperson for Alice in Chains told the press that the band was unaware of any tribute album, and Mudvayne's manager said that reports of the album were only rumors.
In September the band met with director Darren Lynn Bousman, whose film Saw II was in production and would include "Forget to Remember" from Lost and Found. Bousman showed them a scene of a man cutting his eye out of his skull to retrieve a key. When Gray told Bousman about the conversation at Bob's Big Boy two years earlier, Bousman said he holds his production meetings at the restaurant and Saw II was based on a screenplay he wrote years earlier. Gray appeared briefly in the film, and the music video for "Forget to Remember" contained clips from Saw II.
The New Game and Mudvayne (2006–09)
In 2006, Gray, Tribbett and Tom Maxwell were joined by former Pantera and Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul for the supergroup Hellyeah. On March 8, when Mudvayne and Korn performed at the KBPI Birthday Bash in Denver, Thornton waitress Nicole LaScalia was injured during Mudvayne's set. Two years later, LaScalia filed a lawsuit against radio-station owner Clear Channel Broadcasting, concert promoter Live Nation, the University of Denver and members of Mudvayne and Korn. During the summer, Gray, Tribbett, Maxwell and Paul recorded an album as Hellyeah. After a tour with Sevendust, Mudvayne released the 2007 retrospective By the People, for the People (compiled from selections chosen by fans on the band's website). The album debuted at number 51 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, selling about 22,000 copies in its first week.
After Gray and Tribbett returned from touring with Hellyeah, Mudvayne began recording The New Game with Dave Fortman. After the album's 2008 release, Fortman told MTV that it would be followed in six months by another full-length record.
For its self-titled fifth album Mudvayne hoped to create a "white album", describing its cover art. Mudvayne was recorded in the summer of 2008 in El Paso, Texas. The album, printed with blacklight paint, was only visible under a black light (a light whose wavelength is primarily ultraviolet).
Hiatus and break-up (2010–2021)
In 2010, Mudvayne again paused to allow Gray and Tribbett to tour with Hellyeah, and because of the supergroup's album releases the band would be on hiatus until at least 2014. With Hellyeah, Gray and Tribbett have recorded three albums: Stampede, Band of Brothers and Blood for Blood. In 2012, Ryan Martinie toured with Korn as a temporary replacement for bassist Reginald Arvizu, who remained at home during his wife's pregnancy. The following year Martinie played bass on Kurai's debut EP, Breaking the Broken, and in 2014 Tribbett left Hellyeah.
In a new interview with Songfacts in 2015, Gray said that Mudvayne's return seemed unlikely: I don't know if the full band will [ever reunite]. Who knows — they might be putting something else together. We were talking for a while and that whole thing with Greg [Tribbett's 2014 departure from Hellyeah] went down and everything kind of fell apart. Our relationship, which was the only truly solid relationship in the group, although Matt [McDonough] and I are still great, Ryan [Martinie] and I still briefly talk. I mean, the only way I personally would want to do Mudvayne is if everybody licked their wounds and got over it. There's a lot of things in that band that tore us apart. Maybe Mudvayne was the martyr for people that stopped supporting music. You sell 159,000 records the first week, and then the next record is like, 'Whatever, f--k it.' Maybe it's a subliminal message if you don't support things... Mudvayne's probably bigger now than it ever was. So, people want what they can't have.
In 2015, former Mudvayne members Tribbett and McDonough formed the band Audiotopsy with Skrape vocalist Billy Keeton and bassist Perry Stern. Audiotopsy describes its sound as "progressive hard rock."
Musical style and influences
Mudvayne is noted for its musical complexity. The band's music contains what McDonough calls "number symbolism", where certain riffs correspond to lyrical themes. Mudvayne has incorporated elements of death metal, jazz fusion and progressive rock. In addition to these styles, L.D. 50 featured world music and speed metal. Although Mudvayne has been inspired by Obituary, Emperor, Tool, Pantera, Mötley Crüe, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree and Metallica, according to them they are not influenced by other metal bands. They have repeatedly expressed admiration for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and were influenced by the film during the recording of L.D. 50.
Although the band has described its style as "math rock" and "math metal", drummer Matt McDonough said in 2009:
I honestly don't know what 'math metal' is. I made a joke early on in Mudvayne's career that we used an abacus in writing. It seems I should be careful making jokes in interviews. I don't really see Mudvayne as an innovator in anything.
Music critics and journalists have categorized the band as alternative metal, experimental metal, extreme metal, hard rock, heavy metal, industrial metal, math metal, metalcore, neo-progressive metal, neo-progressive rock, nu metal, progressive rock, progressive metal and shock rock.
Appearance
Although Mudvayne was known for its appearance, Gray described its aesthetic as "music first, visuals second". When L.D. 50 was released, the band performed in horror film-style makeup. Epic Records initially promoted Mudvayne without focusing on its members; early promotional materials featured a logo instead of photos of the band, but its appearance and music videos publicized L.D. 50. The members of Mudvayne were originally known by the stage names Kud, sPaG, Ryknow and Gurrg. At the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards (where they won the MTV2 Award for "Dig"), the band appeared in white suits with bloody bullet-hole makeup on their foreheads.[ After 2002, Mudvayne changed makeup styles (from multicolored face paint to extraterrestrials) and changed their stage names to Chüd, Güüg, Rü-D, and Spüg. According to the band, the extravagant makeup added a visual aspect to their music and set them apart from other metal bands. Since 2003 Mudvayne has largely abandoned makeup, but said that a future return to it is not out of the question.
Discography
L.D. 50 (2000)
The End of All Things to Come (2002)
Lost and Found (2005)
The New Game (2008)
Mudvayne (2009)
A Cinderella Story
Mudvayne Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Hold me close then push me around
Beat me up, beat me down to the ground
I'm sure I deserved it
Left my world, left me alone
Locked inside head becomes my home
Inside a hole buried bag of bone
I'm sure you had your reasons
Are you out of your mind?
In my absence your heart
Never grew fonder
[Chorus]
You just leave me alone
Tell me, please tell me
It ain't so
I can't believe it so I walk the road
You just left me alone
Tell me, please tell me
It ain't so
Have to believe it so I walk alone
So I walk alone
By myself
Had my back then you turned around
Love by your fault but we're never proud
Ran away but I'm not aloud
So I suffered through it
Out of your sight
Are you out of your mind?
In my absence your heart
Never grew fonder
[Chorus]
You're not my family
Just nothing left for me you see
It's just like Cinderella
Locked up and hid away
You have no idea
What you've created
Why don't you take a look
And see through a hole without a key
And see what I've been missing
Goddamn you for what has
You're not my family
Just nothing left for me you see
It's just like Cinderella
Locked up and hid away
You have no idea
What you've created
Why don't you take a look
And see through a hole without a key
And see what I've been missing
Goddamn you for what has been done
(No one left, for me)
[Chorus]
[Repeat: x4]
It's just like Cinderella
Locked up and hid away
You have no idea
The song "A Cinderella Story" by Mudvayne is about the effects of abuse and neglect in a relationship. The lyrics depict a relationship where one person is holding the other back and down, leading to the victim feeling trapped and alone. The chorus shows the victim pleading for the abuser to not leave them alone, but ultimately accepting that they must walk the path by themselves. The song also references the fairy tale of Cinderella, comparing the victim's situation to being locked up and hidden away like the famous character.
The lyrics suggest that the abuser may be a family member, as they reference the victim being left alone and feeling like they have no family. The victim also reflects on their own mistakes, believing that they deserved the abuse they received. This is often common in abusive relationships, where the victim is made to feel responsible for the actions of the abuser.
One interesting fact about the song is that it was produced by Dave Fortman, who has produced music for bands like Slipknot and Evanescence. Another interesting fact is that the band's name, Mudvayne, was inspired by a local cemetery, Mudvayne Cemetery. The song was released as part of the band's second album, "The End of All Things to Come," which debuted at number 17 on the Billboard 200 chart. The album was also certified gold by the RIAA. The music video for "A Cinderella Story" features the band performing in an abandoned building and was directed by Robert Schober.
Chords:
The chords for "A Cinderella Story" by Mudvayne are not available as the song is primarily composed of heavy guitar riffs and drums.
Line by Line Meaning
Hold me back and hold me down
I feel trapped and unable to move forward
Hold me close then push me around
You act lovingly towards me, but then hurt me emotionally
Beat me up, beat me down to the ground
You continually hurt me and cause me pain
I'm sure I deserved it
I blame myself for your mistreatment of me
Left my world, left me alone
You abandoned me and left me feeling isolated
Locked inside head becomes my home
I feel trapped in my own thoughts and emotions
Inside a hole buried bag of bone
I feel buried under the weight of my pain and suffering
I'm sure you had your reasons
I try to rationalize your mistreatment of me
Out of your sight
You are not present in my life
Are you out of your mind?
I question your mental state and actions towards me
In my absence your heart never grew fonder
Your love for me did not increase during our time apart
You just leave me alone
You abandon me and refuse to provide emotional support
Tell me, please tell me, it ain't so
I hope that you will deny the fact that you left me alone
I can't believe it so I walk the road
I cannot accept that you have abandoned me and must find my own way
Have to believe it so I walk alone
I must accept the reality that you have left me alone and must navigate life without your support
By myself
I must navigate life alone
Had my back then you turned around
You were once supportive of me, but then became hostile
Love by your fault but we're never proud
Our relationship was dysfunctional and full of pain
Ran away but I'm not aloud
I feel unable to escape the pain you have caused me
So I suffered through it
I endured the pain and mistreatment you inflicted on me
You're not my family
I feel separated and disconnected from you
Just nothing left for me you see
Our relationship has become toxic and there is no value for me in it
It's just like Cinderella
My life feels like a fairy tale, except for the happy ending
Locked up and hid away
I feel trapped and cannot escape from my pain
You have no idea what you've created
You are not aware of the pain and suffering you have caused me
Why don't you take a look
I challenge you to examine the pain you have caused me
And see through a hole without a key
I challenge you to understand the pain I feel without trivializing it
And see what I've been missing
I challenge you to understand the value you have taken away from me
Goddamn you for what has been done (No one left, for me)
I blame you for the pain and suffering I have endured in my life
It's just like Cinderella, Locked up and hid away, You have no idea
I feel trapped and buried under the weight of my pain and suffering, and you refuse to acknowledge the pain you have caused me
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: CHAD L. GRAY, GREG TRIBBETT, MATTHEW MCDONOUGH, RYAN MARTINIE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind