Big Business
Fri Jan 7
Sabala's Mt Tabor
4811 SE Hawthorne

"I think as a kid growing up in a small town, you're looking for total obliteration," says Coady Willis, the brick-fisted drummer for the gigantic-sounding Seattle twosome Big Business. "The Melvins, and music like that, was [perfect for] when I just wanted something that killed, that made it so I couldn't think anymore and that just crushed me. Short of doing something stupid, that was the ultimate escape."

After years of playing in various bands, Willis (Murder City Devils, Dead Low Tide, Broadcast Oblivion) and bassist Jared Warren (Karp, Tight Bros from Way Back When, the Whip) have arrived together at a sound that, while not yet as complex and experimentally fucked as the Melvins, still produces necessary amounts of obliteration.

"I'm definitely striving to be in a band where I feel like we have the freedom to grow," says Willis, expressing some remorse after watching his post-Murder City Devils groups start and stall. "One of the things I felt with [Murder City Devils] is that it became [where] people expected certain things of that band and everybody ended up outgrowing it. I'd love to be in a band that didn't have to be any certain kind of band, and I feel like this is just the beginning."

After playing together for a little over a year, they've released a self-titled EP (on Wäntage Records), and are preparing for the release of their first full length on Hydra Head this month. For a sampler, the Big Business EP is one thick piece of meat. From the opening rev of "O.G." through the lumbering intro of "Off Off Broadway," the four songs texture titan instrumental work with Warren's gruff, classic rock style singing. It's not all one dissonant blast, either, as tracks like "Eis Hexe" build on actual hooks. Warren explains that, growing up in Olympia, he was surrounded by pop bands, whose sensibilities worked their way into his music. "I like catchy choruses and really triumphant hooks and I'm not ashamed to borrow from that style at all," he says. "I think now with a two-person band especially, I have more of a responsibility to find things vocally that fill the gaps, and that's more where my pop sensibility is showing."