In my humid music universe, the Melvins are gods. I first saw them at some shitty club in their stomping grounds of Olympia, Washington, in 1985, and they totally exploded my head: sludgy, chunky guitars and pummeling rhythms, with singer/songwriter Buzz Osborne channeling some kind of comic-tragic rock jester act, equal parts tongue-in-cheek and dead serious. Here was the antidote to the mock-heroic cock-walk of so much overblown rock — a heavier-than-hell band that obliterates the boundaries between punk and metal by creating something loud and furious and so thudding it borders, at times, on punishment, if for the sly humor and fuck-it disregard underlying it all. The Melvins are the band that a young Kurt Cobain tagged around, wanting to emulate (see the chug-chug of Nirvana’s debut, Bleach). The thing is, time doesn’t touch the Melvins: they just keep churning out great music, right to last years Pinkus Abortion Technician. Put them together live with the legendary Redd Kross — high-harmonic purveyors of honeyed power-pop and sunshiny psyche-punk (1987’s Neurotica remains one of my all-time faves) — and you’ve got one of the killerest shows to come to Eugene in a very long time. It’s a strangely apt and exciting pairing of underground stalwarts who share, collectively, six-plus decades of entertaining losers like me. It’s not to be missed.

Melvins and Redd Kross with Tosha Kasai play 8 pm Tuesday, Sept. 10, at WOW Hall; $20 advance, $25 door.

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