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)
Severed
Mudvayne Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Lies, anger, Hate they shoo love away,
Build shells of ourselves outside,
It shelters body from cold reigns of reality,
Come on, Step out, of your rind, assemble strength, focus,
Release and run to me you can never look back to the visions from the
You've got to just trust me to hold your hand through,
Then I turn and walk away,
Eclipse you,
And bleed you strip you of your states of ain soph aur,
Eclipse you,
I spit up on my plate and I push everything away,
I need,
And we sever all ties,
It creates disruption midst circle of friends,
I become the sacrifice,
Spare your life and leave me to my misery,
Get off the cross, and save yourself, run away
Run now get away from me if I can get my grip I'll pull you down into
the hell I call my head you'll never get away
I sit down in my ugly place and build walls out of fragments from my
past of all the people that I needed and loved that walked away,
You've got to just trust me to hold your hand through then I'll turn
and walk away
I walk under the clouds of gray,
Sphere of storms in my head,
I'm trapped again in endless rain
I divorce the thoughts of you I love with me,
I divorce your innocence and my guilt,
I divorce the lying sellout confidence,
I'm divorcing every mother fuckin' thing
I divorce the love bled meaningless,
I divorce the makeshift harmony,
I divorce the taunting acts of violence,
I divorce the pastime of jealousy,
I divorce control,
I divorce the faith,
I divorce the virtue,
I divorce the rain,
I divorce the excuse,
I divorce the greed,
I divorce the need,
I divorce iniquity in this mother fuckin' bullshit life,
Just want it all to go away,
Just want to run away to die, take it, myself, my life
Text book fucking mental, off me and pitch me in a hole
I'll always be your shadow,
And veil your eyes from states of ain soph aur,
I can't be the hero anymore,
I spit up on my plate and then I turn and walk away,
I spit up on my plate and I disrupt the family,
I spit up on my plate and I sever the entity,
And I feel your warm sun on my face
Separate .
Eclipse you and bleed you strip you of your states of ain soph aur,
I need you,
It's always been this way, I push it all away,
From me
The lyrics to Mudvayne's song Severed describe the struggle of an individual who is haunted by their past and trapped in a cycle of self-doubt and destructive behavior. The lyrics suggest that the singer is aware of their issues but doesn't know how to overcome them. They hide behind lies, anger, and hate, pushing away love and building walls around themselves. The singer is aware that they need to step out of their shell and find the strength to focus and release their negative emotions. However, even when they receive support from people who care for them, they struggle to trust and end up turning their back on those who can help them. The lyrics suggest a desire to run away from everything and everyone, creating a sense of misery and self-loathing.
On the whole, Mudvayne's "Severed" is a complex exploration of the themes of self-doubt, anxiety, and desolation that pervade the human psyche. The lyrics employ metaphors and strong imagery to create a powerful and haunting effect, leaving the listener with a sense of disquiet and unease.
Line by Line Meaning
And we hide behind,
We conceal ourselves with lies, anger and hate, pushing love away.
Lies, anger, Hate they shoo love away,
Our lies, anger and hate push love away.
Build shells of ourselves outside,
We create a protective shell around us.
It shelters body from cold reigns of reality,
This shell protects us from the harshness of reality.
Come on, Step out, of your rind, assemble strength, focus,
Take off your protective shell, gather your strength and focus.
Release and run to me you can never look back to the visions from the past they fade and wilt in time,
Let go of the past and run towards me, because memories fade with time.
You've got to just trust me to hold your hand through,
Trust me to guide you.
Then I turn and walk away,
But once you reach me, I will leave you.
Eclipse you,
I will overshadow you.
And bleed you strip you of your states of ain soph aur,
I will drain you of your energy and vitality.
I spit up on my plate and I push everything away,
I reject everything and everyone.
I need,
Despite rejecting others, I need them.
And we sever all ties,
We cut all connections.
It creates disruption midst circle of friends,
It causes disturbance among friends.
I become the sacrifice,
I am willing to sacrifice myself.
Spare your life and leave me to my misery,
Let me suffer alone and save yourself.
Get off the cross, and save yourself, run away
Stop sacrificing yourself for my sake and save yourself.
Run now get away from me if I can get my grip I'll pull you down into the hell I call my head you'll never get away
Protect yourself from me because I might bring you down.
I sit down in my ugly place and build walls out of fragments from my past of all the people that I needed and loved that walked away,
I retreat to my dark space and create walls with memories of people I loved who abandoned me.
I walk under the clouds of gray,
I am surrounded by sadness and depression.
Sphere of storms in my head,
My mind is filled with chaos and turmoil.
I'm trapped again in endless rain
I feel stuck and helpless, like I can never escape my misery.
I divorce the thoughts of you I love with me,
I separate myself from the thoughts of you I once loved.
I divorce your innocence and my guilt,
I reject your purity and blame myself.
I divorce the lying sellout confidence,
I reject the false confidence I once had.
I'm divorcing every mother fuckin' thing
I am rejecting everything without discrimination.
I divorce the love bled meaningless,
I reject the love that no longer holds any value.
I divorce the makeshift harmony,
I reject the temporary peace in my life.
I divorce the taunting acts of violence,
I reject the violence that taunts me.
I divorce the pastime of jealousy,
I reject feeling envious of others.
I divorce control,
I reject the desire to control everything.
I divorce the faith,
I reject my belief in a higher power.
I divorce the virtue,
I reject my morality and virtue.
I divorce the rain,
I reject the rain, a metaphor for the troubles in my life.
I divorce the excuse,
I reject the excuses I make for myself.
I divorce the greed,
I reject my desire for material possessions.
I divorce the need,
I reject my need for others and seek solitude.
I divorce iniquity in this mother fuckin' bullshit life,
I reject everything wrong with my life.
Just want it all to go away,
I just want my problems to disappear.
Just want to run away to die, take it, myself, my life
I want to run away and end my life.
Text book fucking mental, off me and pitch me in a hole
I am mentally unstable, reject me and bury me.
I'll always be your shadow,
I will always follow you and overshadow you.
And veil your eyes from states of ain soph aur,
I hide your eyes from the state of limitless possibilities.
I can't be the hero anymore,
I am no longer trying to be heroic.
I disrupt the family,
I tear apart the family.
I beg to borrow
I plead to take or use something temporarily.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Songtrust Ave
Written by: CHAD L. GRAY, GREG TRIBBETT, MATTHEW MCDONOUGH, RYAN MARTINIE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind