Originally formed in Seattle by Jared Warren and Coady Willis, stoner metal wunderkinds Big Business have been dredging up sludgy riffs and propulsive drums since 2004. With a style that is sometimes proggy, sometimes melodic and always heavy, Big Business have been shoring up their sound for more than a decade, and the dedication to their craft shows. Their most recent album, Command Your Weather is an upbeat and minimalist post-metal journey that combines the horror iconography of punks like The Misfits with the heavy, bombastic density of early Black Sabbath.

Big Business
Sat, 7pm, $12+
The Ritz, San Jose

People listen to stoner rock for a lot of reasons, but not usually for the lyrics. But Big Business is no ordinary stoner band, as one might suspect with any band whose core members are also in the Melvins.

In fact, drummer Coady Willis is in both Seattle punk band Murder City Devils and the Melvins right now, in addition to Big Business. Vocalist and bassist Jared Warren was in the Melvinsesque Northwest band Karp before graduating to the actual Melvins.

In the last few years, Willis and Warren have added guitarists Toshi Kasai and Scott Martin, expanding their sound somewhat (though they’ve always had collaborators to back them up). Unlike the super serious sludge from most stony metal bands, Big Business’ lyrics have an indie-rock wit to them, and some actually sound like they could be pop songs, if they weren’t being hammered away at by a metal quartet. So yeah, in a lot of ways it’s like the Melvins franchised and Big Business were the first takers—their specific strangeness is different, but the way they subvert every genre they touch in their approach is very much the same.