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)
Cradle
Mudvayne Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Breathe
Breathe
Breathe
Push
Push
Push
I lost you
You were my god
Thought what do I do now
You were never there for me
Never there to carry me
26 years looking back that time is gone
It was you I believed in
Look what you've done to me
Realize what you've done to
Me!
I can't bleed
I can't bleed
I want to bleed
Before my life just walks away from me
I can't see going on,
In this darkness I'm blind,
Beneath my cradle, the bough has broke,
I exorcise my loss,
Your lies, punishment
It takes time
To try to mend the wounds of all the suffering
What do I do now
And, all I'm asking from you please
Send me a sign,
To guide me through the times that lie in front of me
I'll get by
Myself
Look at me now, a piece of shit like you!
Look at me now, you left me, so fuck you!
Look at me now, a piece of shit like you!
Look at me now, you left me, so fuck you!
'cause, everybody leaves me
Everybody's gone.
Watch my father leave me
There's nobody left.
Feels like I've never been loved!
Everybody leaves me
Never gave a shit about me.
Everybody's gone
I'll rot in my head alone.
I don't give a fuck about you, go the fuck away
I don't give a fuck about you, go the fuck away
I don't give a fuck about you, go the fuck away
I don't give a fuck about you, go the fuck away
(i'll rot in my head all alone)
Fucking cocksucker
Fake being
Inside of my heart you are the liar
Innocence displaced
Institutionalized in my own life
Been left.
Here I stand now and I'm alone
With no one to comfort me
One set of footprints in the sand
No one to take my hand, I'll
I'll walk through as long as I need
I'll drift through my life though I'm alone
Outgrown the cradle that once housed me
And I've found that all I need is
Me
Me
Me
Me
Found I've never needed you
To push through
All the shit that stacks up
Inside of my life
Endless plight that circulates through my body
I'll keep stumbling
Beating
Pummeling
Teething on the rind and
Renounce my being
I can't see going on
I can't see going on
I can't see going on
I can't see going on
I can't see
I'm to tired
I can't see
Well, I can't see goin' on
I'm so tired
Of trying to mend the wounds of all my suffering
What do I do now
And, all I'm asking from you please
Send me a sign
To guide me through the times that lie in front of me
I'll get by
Myself
I can't see going on, fuck it!
I can't see going on, fuck it!
I can't see going on, fuck it!
I can't see going on, fuck it!
The song "Cradle" by Mudvayne is a deeply personal and emotional piece that explores the pain of abandonment and the struggle to find oneself after being left alone. The lyrics express feelings of betrayal and anger towards God, who is referred to as the "you" in the song. The singer feels like they were let down by their faith and feels like they were never cared for or carried by God. The song further explores the pain of loneliness and the feeling of being left behind by everyone important in the singer's life.
The first part of the song is repetitive, with the singer asking to breathe and push. The repetition of these words could represent the effort it takes to keep going despite feelings of hopelessness. The song then proceeds to express the pain caused by God leaving the singer, as well as the feeling of being a disappointment just like the one who abandoned them. The song ultimately ends with the singer finding strength in themselves and refusing to give up, even in the face of their pain.
Line by Line Meaning
Breathe
Take a deep breath and prepare for what's to come.
Push
You have to keep pushing forward and not give up.
I lost you
I lost my faith in something or someone I once believed in.
You were my god
You were the one I looked up to and depended on.
Thought what do I do now
I feel lost and don't know how to move on without you.
You were never there for me
You never provided the support or guidance I needed.
Never there to carry me
You never carried me through the difficult times.
26 years looking back that time is gone
I realize that a significant amount of my life has passed and I can never get that time back.
It was you I believed in
I trusted and believed in you above all else.
Look what you've done to me
Your actions or lack thereof have had a negative impact on me.
Realize what you've done to
It's time for you to face the consequences of what you've done to me.
Me!
I am the one who has suffered because of you.
I can't bleed
I am emotionally numb and unable to release my pain.
I want to bleed
I want to feel something, even if it's pain.
Before my life just walks away from me
I need to take action before my life slips away from me completely.
In this darkness I'm blind
I am lost and unable to see a way out of my pain.
Beneath my cradle, the bough has broke
The foundation of my life has crumbled, leaving me feeling vulnerable and alone.
I exorcise my loss, your lies, punishment
I am trying to purge myself of the hurt caused by your deception.
It takes time
Healing is a slow process and cannot be rushed.
To try to mend the wounds of all the suffering
I must work to heal the pain and suffering I have experienced.
And, all I'm asking from you please
I am searching for guidance and support from a higher power or someone who can help me.
Send me a sign
Give me a signal or indication that things will get better.
To guide me through the times that lie in front of me
I need someone or something to help me navigate the challenges that are ahead of me.
I'll get by myself
Ultimately, I know that I am the only one who can pull myself out of this situation.
Found I've never needed you
I've come to realize that I can survive without you and don't need you to succeed.
To push through
I can overcome the obstacles in my life by pushing myself forward.
All the shit that stacks up inside of my life
The overwhelming difficulties I face on a daily basis are weighing me down.
Endless plight that circulates through my body
The constant pain and suffering I endure is a daily struggle that I can't escape.
Teething on the rind and renounce my being
I am determined to fight against the pain and suffering and refuse to give up.
I can't see
I am at a loss and don't know how to continue.
I'm so tired
I am worn out from the emotional pain and suffering I have experienced.
Fuck it!
I am frustrated and at my breaking point, and I just don't care anymore.
Fucking cocksucker
An exclamation of anger and frustration directed at someone who has caused pain or suffering.
Fake being
Someone is pretending to be something they are not.
Inside of my heart you are the liar
You have deceived me and caused me great pain.
Innocence displaced
I have lost my innocence and faith in the person or situation that has caused my pain.
Institutionalized in my own life
I am trapped and unable to break free from my pain and suffering.
Here I stand now and I'm alone
I am standing on my own two feet, without relying on anyone else for support or guidance.
With no one to comfort me
I am struggling and have no one to turn to for comfort or consolation.
One set of footprints in the sand
I am walking my path alone, without anyone to guide me.
No one to take my hand
I have no one to help me or support me through my struggles.
Outgrown the cradle that once housed me
I have matured and grown beyond the point of relying on others for support.
And I've found that all I need is me
I have discovered that I am strong enough to overcome my struggles on my own.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: CHAD L. GRAY, GREG TRIBBETT, MATTHEW MCDONOUGH, RYAN MARTINIE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind