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)
Heard It All Before
Mudvayne Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Can't live in it, can't live with it.
Hard times for the cryin' type are like a wrecking ball
Hard as a stone, can't let it penetrate.
You've gotta believe in yourself, with your mind,
With your guts, with your heart, make a stand.
A stand against fools that will steal it away,
I ain't sellin' what they're wanting to buy anymore, no more never
I ain't listen because I've heard all that bullshit before, so many times before.
The eyes of a dog will wander for food, like a scavenger.
You've gotta own it, gotta defend it.
You've gotta believe in the hunt, in the prowl, in the search,
In the kill. I'm the alpha man
I ain't sellin' what they're wanting to buy anymore, no more never
I ain't listen because I've heard all that bullshit before,
So many times.
I've, I've heard it all before, I've heard it! I've. I've lived it all before, I've lived it
No more
The parasites sucking the life out of me,
They're like cannibals
Bleed you for anything, bleed you for everything.
You've gotta believe in the strength, of your mind, of the soul,
To the bone. What is real.
I've, I heard it all before, I've heard it! I've. I lived it all before, I've lived
No more I've, I heard it all before, I've herd it! I've, I seen it all before, I've seen it!
Heard it. Lived it. Know it. Believe it.
I live for no one, I'd die for no one.
I've, I heard it all before, I've heard it! I've. I lived it all before, I've lived
No more
I've. Heard it, seen it, lived it. I've. Done it, know it, believe it.
I've. I've heard it all before, I lived it!
The lyrics in Mudvayne's song 'Heard It All Before' are a compelling reflection of the inner turmoil and frustration of a broken and irreparably damaged individual. The words capture the essence of the individual's reluctance to succumb to the past and a determination to take ownership of their life. The lyrics start by suggesting that the past is gone, and one needs to move on from it rather than live in it or with it. The individual is struggling to cope with the hard times and is determined to stand up against adversity. They understand the necessity of believing in themselves, and their mind, guts, and heart help them to make a stand. They are ready to face the fools who are out to steal their dreams and would rip out hearts from their chest if need be.
The lyrics go on to suggest that there is no more selling what others want to buy; there is no more listening to the same old BS on repeat. The individual knows what they want, they know how to get it, and they will stop at nothing less than that. They believe in owning and defending what's rightfully theirs and standing up against the parasites that suck the life out of them. The vocals communicate a sense of disillusionment and a caged passion, choked by life's trials and heavy burdens. The words resound with frustration at past mistakes and missteps, spoken with a sharp edge, cutting through in a howl of defiance.
Line by Line Meaning
Past times are for laziness and past time is gone.
The past is the past and it's time to move on.
Can't live in it, can't live with it.
You can't go back, but you also can't ignore what happened.
Hard times for the cryin' type are like a wrecking ball
Difficult times can destroy you if you let them.
Hard as a stone, can't let it penetrate.
You need to be strong and not let hard times affect you.
You've gotta believe in yourself, with your mind,
You need to have confidence in yourself.
With your guts, with your heart, make a stand.
You need to take a stand with all of your being.
A stand against fools that will steal it away,
You need to defend yourself against those who would take advantage of you.
Rip the heart from your chest, and devour it.
These people will take everything from you, leaving you with nothing.
I ain't sellin' what they're wanting to buy anymore, no more never
I won't do what they want anymore, no matter what.
I ain't listen because I've heard all that bullshit before, so many times before.
I won't listen to their lies and excuses anymore.
The eyes of a dog will wander for food, like a scavenger.
People will do whatever it takes to get what they want.
You've gotta own it, gotta defend it.
You need to fight for what's yours.
You've gotta believe in the hunt, in the prowl, in the search,
You need to be determined to get what you want.
In the kill. I'm the alpha man
You need to be the one in charge, the leader.
The parasites sucking the life out of me,
People who drain you and take advantage of you.
They're like cannibals
They will consume you if you let them.
Bleed you for anything, bleed you for everything.
They will take everything you have if you let them.
You've gotta believe in the strength, of your mind, of the soul,
You need to know that you have the strength to overcome anything.
To the bone. What is real.
You need to know the truth, even if it's painful.
I live for no one, I'd die for no one.
I live and die for myself only.
I've. Heard it, seen it, lived it. I've. Done it, know it, believe it.
I know the truth because I've experienced it all before.
I've. I've heard it all before, I lived it!
I know what's real and what's not because I've been through it all.
I've heard it all before, I've herd it! I've, I seen it all before, I've seen it!
I know the truth because I've experienced it myself.
No more
I won't deal with it anymore.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: CHAD L. GRAY, GREG TRIBBETT, MATTHEW MCDONOUGH, RYAN MARTINIE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind