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)
Trapped in the Wake of a Dream
Mudvayne Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Hating me,
Well then,
Cut, cut the noose
And let me fall away
I'm, growing weak and tired
Of you
Fucking
Pushing me.
You pulled the trigger,
Trapped in,
The wake,
Of your
Dream
You're all killers.
Always fucking pushing me
Insulting me
I've overcome
I have found the strength of gods in me.
Crushing
All unwilling
This is so unstoppable.
Hard as nails,
Hook that holds,
Reach down and find the strength of many in you.
My sanctuary
Calling my name,
So I run through
To the light,
Weeping through a cloud.
Darkened,
By a tainted dream,
Of me,
Being pummeled by the tide,
Crushing,
Killing me
But I can't wake up,
Trapped in,
The wake of a
Dream
You're all killers.
Always fucking pushing me,
Insulting me,
I've overcome,
I have found the strength of gods in me.
Crushing
All unwilling,
This is so unstoppable.
Hard as nails,
Hook that holds,
Reach down and find the strength of many in you.
Call it,
Call a truce.
I'm believing
In it more and more.
Comfort,
Purge the truth, I'll believe it.
I'm so weak and sore, shadowed
Hide and seek,
But you never looked.
I wait behind the door
Call out,
Bite the hand that is feeding
Compassion no more.
I hope I never wake up.
Dream-sewing, filters, distort reality of what is mine through light this mind awakens
I draw the line from then and now, awake and dreaming, forgotten past future becomes mine.
Throw the chains,
All away,
Take control,
Of your life.
Powers known,
This is my
Throw the chains,
All away,
Take control,
Of your life.
Powers known,
This is my
Dream
You're all killers.
Always fucking pushing me,
Insulting me,
I've overcome,
I have found the strength of gods in me.
Crushing
All unwilling,
This is so unstoppable.
Hard as nails,
Hook that holds,
Reach down and find the strength of many in you.
The lyrics of Mudvayne's song Trapped in the Wake of a Dream address the feelings of being trapped, helpless and alone. The singer is constantly pushed, insulted, and beaten down by those around him, and it seems like there is no escape. He is exhausted and weak from the constant barrage, yet he finds strength within himself to fight back against those who are oppressing him. Despite this struggle, the singer is still trapped in the wake of a dream, unable to fully escape the nightmare that he is living.
The singer's search for strength and his fight against those who oppress him can be interpreted as a metaphor for overcoming personal struggles, trauma, or societal pressure. The lyrics encourage listeners to find the strength within themselves and to not let others dictate their lives. The last lines of the song, "Throw the chains, all away, take control of your life, powers known, this is my dream," are a call to action for listeners to take control of their lives and to not let anyone hold them back.
Line by Line Meaning
Do I deserve these beatings?
Questioning whether or not the abuse is deserved.
Hating me,
Someone else's feelings about the singer.
Well then,
Response to the previous line.
Cut, cut the noose
Asking to be released from the situation.
And let me fall away
Wanting to distance from the source of the abuse.
I'm, growing weak and tired
Feeling worn down from the constant abuse.
Of you
Referring to the abuser.
And your little shoving games
Describing the abusive behavior.
Fucking
Emphasizing the previous line.
Pushing me.
More emphasis on the abusive behavior.
You pulled the trigger,
The abuser is responsible for the situation they are in now.
Trapped in,
Feeling stuck and unable to move forward.
The wake,
The aftermath of the abuser's actions.
Of your
Referring to the abuser.
Dream
The abuser's vision for their life.
You're all killers.
The abuser is hurting the singer and others.
Always fucking pushing me
Continued abusive behavior.
Insulting me
Verbal abuse in addition to physical abuse.
I've overcome
Despite the difficulties, the singer perseveres.
I have found the strength of gods in me.
The singer has discovered inner strength and resilience.
Crushing
Destroying the opposition.
All unwilling
Those who oppose the abuser are being oppressed.
This is so unstoppable.
The singer will not be deterred.
Hard as nails,
Strong and unyielding.
Hook that holds,
Referring to the metaphorical hook that keeps the abuser in control.
Reach down and find the strength of many in you.
The singer is speaking to themselves, reminding them to find strength in the support of others.
My sanctuary
A place of peace and safety.
Calling my name,
The sanctuary beckons to the singer.
So I run through
The singer is seeking refuge.
To the light,
Looking for hope and positivity.
Weeping through a cloud.
Struggling through difficult emotions.
Darkened,
Feeling hopeless.
By a tainted dream,
The abuser's vision is tainted by their harmful behavior.
Of me,
The dream includes the singer as a victim.
Being pummeled by the tide,
A metaphor for the abuse being overwhelming and inescapable.
But I can't wake up,
Feeling trapped in the situation.
Call it,
Naming the situation.
Call a truce.
Asking for the abuse to stop.
I'm believing
Having faith that things can get better.
In it more and more.
Growing more convinced that the situation can be resolved.
Comfort,
Seeking solace.
Purge the truth, I'll believe it.
Rejecting the reality of the situation.
I'm so weak and sore, shadowed
The singer is physically and emotionally exhausted.
Hide and seek,
Trying to avoid the abuser.
But you never looked.
The abuser does not care to find the singer.
I wait behind the door
Feeling trapped and unsure how to escape.
Call out,
Asking for help or support.
Bite the hand that is feeding
Harming those who have previously enabled the abuser.
Compassion no more.
Those who once cared for the abuser are no longer sympathetic to their behavior.
I hope I never wake up.
Desiring to remain in the safety of sleep rather than facing the reality of the situation.
Dream-sewing, filters, distort reality of what is mine through light this mind awakens
The abuser's vision for the future is false and misinformed.
I draw the line from then and now, awake and dreaming, forgotten past future becomes mine.
The singer is ready to take control of their own life and break free from the abuser.
Throw the chains,
Breaking free from the abuser's control.
All away,
Completely freeing themselves.
Take control,
Taking charge of their own life.
Of your life.
No longer letting the abuser have power over them.
Powers known,
Realizing their own inner strength.
This is my
Taking ownership of their life and their future.
Dream
Having their own vision for the future that is not controlled by the abuser.
You're all killers.
The abuser's behavior is harmful and destructive.
Always fucking pushing me,
Continued abusive behavior.
Insulting me,
Verbal abuse in addition to physical abuse.
I've overcome,
Despite the difficulties, the singer perseveres.
I have found the strength of gods in me.
The singer has discovered inner strength and resilience.
Crushing
Destroying the opposition.
All unwilling,
Those who oppose the abuser are being oppressed.
This is so unstoppable.
The singer will not be deterred.
Hard as nails,
Strong and unyielding.
Hook that holds,
Referring to the metaphorical hook that keeps the abuser in control.
Reach down and find the strength of many in you.
The singer is speaking to themselves, reminding them to find strength in the support of others.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: CHAD L. GRAY, GREG TRIBBETT, MATTHEW MCDONOUGH, RYAN MARTINIE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind