Matt McDonough, Mudvayne's drummer and unofficial spokesman, lets out a sigh and takes a rare moment of pause from his incessant chatter. McDonough has just been asked to describe his band's music. It's a request most musicians shun, and the usually verbose drummer is proving to be no exception.
"I hate that everybody wants to categorize things," McDonough says at last, "though I will say this: another interviewer once asked us to describe our music, and Chad [Gray vocals] said, 'It's Math Metal. Bring your abacus.' It was a joke, but it stuck."
It's also, as McDonough admits, not entirely incorrect. The songs on Mudvayne's major-label debut, L.D. 50 (No Name Recordings/Epic), twist through a maze of shifting tempos and time signatures, the band gleefully chopping riffs into angular, odd-metered groups of notes. It's a calculated, technically exact style of heavy metal that challenges even the most astute listener to find the "one"--the beat that defines the rhythm--in each measure. Says McDonough, "The music that we create is completely mapped out--there's absolutely no room for improvisation."
And yet it's this precise, technical aspect of the band that is often overlooked; fans and rock scribes instead tend to focus on the group's stylized, theatrical face paint and outfits, and the ultra-aggressive, visceral rage of its music. In truth, it is hard to look past Mudvayne's distinctive trappings. Onstage and off, the musicians conceal their identities with abstract face paint and absurd nicknames-- Kud (Gray), Gurrg (Greg Tribbett, guitar), Spag (McDonough), and Ryknow (Ryan Martinie, bass)-- their individual alter ego creates a sort of uniform weirdness.
But look beyond the names and the makeup, and you'll find an extreme and highly technical brand of heavy metal that incorporates strains of death and speed metal, hardcore and prog rock. It's music that's designed to appeal to listeners' brains as much as to their raw emotions. It's these qualities that have garnered the group innumerable comparisons to another of modern metal's most volatile and unconventional acts--Slipknot. The members of Mudvayne will agree that there are, in fact, eerie similarities between the two groups.
"The first time I ever heard of Slipknot was when they performed on Ozzfest two years ago," says Tribbett. "I remember watching them come onstage with the masks and stuff, and I just thought, Holy fuck, because the similarities were there in so many ways. So I got a copy of their album and played it at our next practice. Chad looked at the album cover, shook his head and went, 'Man, we're always five fucking minutes late.'"
More likely, though, they're right on time. L.D. 50 dropped quietly into stores last summer and, with little help from radio and MTV, slowly began to sell. Much of the group's recognition can be attributed to the fact that, like most of the current crop of new metal bands, Mudvayne has eschewed traditional media outlets and has instead built its fanbase through incessant touring--including a run on last summer's inaugural Tattoo the Eath festival with Slipknot and Slayer--and good old-fashioned word of mouth.
Accordingly, it was only a matter of time before the media came looking for the band. MTV recently put the video for L.D. 50's first single, "Dig," into rotation on its flagship station as well as on MTV2. The video has also spawned a DVD single, the first of its kind to be released by Sony.
Not bad for a group whose music was once condsidered almost inaccessible. And yet, McDonough defiantly declares Mudvayne the most accessible group of musicians he's ever played with.
"It's true," says the drummer. "All the band's I was in before Mudvayne were very extreme speed metal. This is the only band I've ever been in that has ever had any sort of commercial viability whatsoever."

Mudvayne formed in 1996 in, as the band members describe it, the "barren wasteland" of Peoria, Illinois. They knew of one another through the tight-knit local music circuit, often playing shows with each other's bands, and at times even playing in band's together; as was the case when Gray sang with McDonough's pre-Mudvayne outfit, Brainsaw.
"In a way, Brainsaw was really the first incarnation of Mudvayne, just without Greg on guitar," says McDonough, "because Brainsaw's bassist Shawn Barclay, was actually the original bassist in Mudvayne. "It was Barclay who put Mudvayne together when we were working with odd time signatures, weird phrasing and that kind of stuff, because that's the only way I know how to play," says McDonough.
In 1997, after a year on the local circuit, the band released Kill I Oughta, a seven-song EP consisting of three studio tracks the band had recorded for a demo and four live cuts. "That disc was really just thrown together for the fans," says McDonough, "but it vecame pretty instrumental in getting us signed." Eventually, the CD came to the attention of Epic Records, which signed Mudvayne in the fall of 1999.
Ironically, the band member responsible for creating Mudvayne --Shawn Barclay-- was no longer with the group at the time of the signing. "As the years progressed, he began to splinter off from the direction the rest of us wanted to head in," says McDonough.
In his place, the band recruted Ryan Martinie, the bassist in a local instrumental trio named Broken Altar. With his frenetic five-string bass acrobatics and theatrical stage presence, Martinie made an instant and lasting impression on the group. "Our whole vision began to change after Ryan joined," says Tribbett. "We had been talking for a while about wanting to be more than just four guys going onstage in blue jeans and T-shirts and playing our songs. We wanted to bring a level of theatricality to our performance. So that's when we started experimenting with the makeup."
Although each member's facepaint is carefully detailed, the band insists there's no meaning behind the designs, nor did they put much thought into the patterns. "The makeup just developed as a way to add to the visual aspect of the performance," says Tribbett. "It's the same with the nicknames. A lot of people try too associate the names with the makeup, but they really have no relation. If you spend more than a half day with us you're gonna get a nickname. It's just the way we are."

Personality-wise, Tribbett and McDonough are in many ways polar opposites. While the guitarist prefers to answer questions with a minimum of discussion, the drummer will happily, and quite knowledgeably, talk incessantly on most any topic thrown his way. It's interesting then, that these two band members are Mudvayne's main songwriting team. It's prbably also the reason that the band is able to successfully incorporate a high level of techinical precision into its music--no doubt McDonough's influence--and yet still retain the energy and aggression essential to appealing to a heavy metal audience.
"A lot of what I do on guitar is a reaction to what Matt plays," says Tribbett. "He loves to create fucked-up drum beats in weird time signatures, so I have to come up with parts that complement and expand on that," To that end, Tribbett often uses his guitar as a coloring rather than as as lead instrument, playing jagged single-note lines underneath verses and switching over to heavier power-chord riffing on choruses. Traditional guitar solos are virtually non-existent in Mudvayne, and lead guitar breaks usually consist of melodic repeating figures or counter melodies.
"The most challenging part of writing in this band is making sure that everything flows together and that all the parts are crisp and clear," says the guitarist. For that reason, Tribbett keeps his setup minimal, employing a Les Paul Studio tuned two whole steps below standard (low to high: C F Bb Eb G C), two Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier heads running in stereo, a Roland Jazz Chorus pedal on the clean channel, a Morley wah and a Line 6 digital delay.
One of the most interesting and unique aspects of the songwriting process for L.D. 50 was the way in which the bandmates attempted to pair riffs with lyrics based on what McDonough calls "number symbolism." Perhaps the best example of how it was applied on Oedipal tale about Ed Gein, a serial killer who in the Fifties killed at least 15 women and stored their bodies -including his own mother's- on his Wisconsin farm.
"At the time Chad and I were writing the lyrics, Greg had a riff that was in alternating bars of four and five," says McDonough. "Ed Gein was, among other things, a murderer and a grave robber -things I assiciate with nighttime activity- and since the number nine is a lunar number I figured that the riff would fit well with the words. So we exploited those dark themes in the song by phrasing everything in nines, or in combinations of fours and fives."
But while all this talk about numerology may make for interesting conversation, in the end it all comes down to the music. And isn't music -heavy metal in particular- designed to connect with people on an emothional and physical, rather than an intellectual, level?"
"Yeah, that's true," says McDonough. "But at the same time I've always felt that a band should have two sides. There's the studio side, where you use your brain, and then there's the live side. A lot of the potential anger that a metal band like us has is reserved for the live show. And when that comes out, it's a maniacal, hysterical experience."
This summer; Mudvayne will be bringing that manic energy to their largest audience yet, performing on the second stage at Ozzfest 2001. It's a fitting chain of events for Tribbett in particular; who just two years ago was watching Slipknot perform in the same capacity. Regarding the success that band went on to achieve in the years since, Tribbett sees Mudvayne poised at the gates of something much larger as well.
"This is only the beginning," says the guitarist. "We're gonna go a lot farther than we are now. It's just a matter of time."