Meatbodies

Meatbodies

Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom

In The Red

Meatbodies’ latest undertaking and borderline lost album, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom, is their most varied and realized work to date. It’s a melodic, hook-filled rock epic in which frontman and lead guitarist Chad Ubovich faces the trials of sobriety, redemption, reinvention while literally learning to walk and play again. Resurrection not only accompanies the record, but its production as well, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom examines themes surrounding love and loss, escapism, defeatism, hedonism, psychedelics and much more. By 2017, Ubovich had reached a crossroads. After years of increasingly insane shows playing to heaving crowds with an ever-evolving and rotating door of personnel, fatigue had taken its toll and he realized another change was on the horizon. Retreating to the seedy Los Angeles underbelly—in search of meaning and a reset—he escaped into that world, ignoring his own well being, trying to forget his successes. It was at this point that Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom began to take shape—a project built by a man searching for new beginnings and his own sense of self. After sobering up, sessions began with longtime collaborator Dylan Fujioka. However, due to discrepancies with the studio, tensions were high and the plug was pulled. And as the world took a back seat, so did the idea of Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom. Not wanting to sit still at home, Ubovich began to comb through his previous demos, and, with that, 333 was born, the now de facto third Meatbodies album. Yet Flora was never far from Ubovich’s...

Meatbodies

333

In The Red

Over the course of the decade, Meatbodies’ Chad Ubovich has been a perennial candidate for MVP of West Coast’s fertile rock scene. The LA native could be seen peeling off guitar solos in Mikal Cronin’s backing band, supplying the Sabbath-sized low end for Ty Segall and Charlie Moothart as the bassist for Fuzz, and, of course, fronting his own Meatbodies. Today the recently dormant experimental noise / freak-rock outfit has announced their return with 333—a corrosive stew of guitar scuzz, raw acoustic rave-ups, and primitive electronics that charts Ubovich’s journey from drug-induced darkness to clear-eyed sobriety. 333 simultaneously reflects on how the world he re-entered was still pretty messed up—if not more so. “These lyrics are dark, but I think these are things that a lot of people are feeling and going through” he says. “Here in America, we’re watching the fall of U.S. capitalism, and 333 is a cartoonish representation of that decline.”  In mid to late 2019, the band—Ubovich and drummer Dylan Fujioka—had a new album in the can, ready to be mixed. But when COVID hit, like so many other artists, they put their release on hold as they rode out the pandemic’s first wave. During that idle time, Ubovich discovered a cache of demos that he and Fujioka had recorded in a bedroom back in the summer of 2018, and he really liked what he heard. In contrast to Meatbodies’ typical full-band attack, it was deliriously disordered. “It sounded gross, like a scary Magical Mystery Tour,”...

Meatbodies

Alice

In The Red

With Alice, Meatbodies return ascending toward ground level. A “heavy-pop” concept, metal on molly. Chad Ubovich, Patrick Nolan, and Kevin Boog step out in new form, soaring through diverse stories, tones, and characters. Dancing between quiet and loud, funk and doom, pop and noise. Their message preached is celestial and deafening, a sacred scripture for today’s world: a warbling rhodes piano, a liquifying electric guitar, a ghostly synthesizer skating across the sands of a twelve-stringed acoustic.The band digs deep into the rich soils of Earth to reveal the chaotic sensual vibrations underneath the fields we walk upon. Connecting our limbs, our mouths, our consciousness to the microcosms of the grime, all while being lit by black light. Captured wriggling and alive in San Francisco by Ubovich and Eric Bauer at The Bauer Mansion, this album is a step in the right direction, a new direction, a new way of thinking.Watching the futures, watching the world burn.“Ubovich intones with a spaced-out, reverb-heavy delivery like a garage-punk Syd Barrett.” —LA Weekly

Meatbodies

Valley Girl

Famous Class

***Through the toxic foliage of the American slicked back hairdo there emerges the essence of the underground weirdo. Dance! Kiss! Lick! Love! SPIT! TOUCH ME BABY! IM REAL! Suggestions on the highway spiders up the pillar. Kill the fake, MOVE what's inside you. MOVE what you got! MOVE YOUR "MEATBODY!" KEVIN BOOG, CHAD UBOVICH, PATRICK NOLAN, sometimes BOOG CHAD PAT, usually THE MEATBODIES, also known as MEATBODIES. What was ONCE a solo affair for Mr. Chad has now turned into 3! conjoining hands, conjoining rhythms. GETTING UP FOR THE TONGUES. Clapping in the distance. Make yourself a MEATBODY. Hear the noise you weren't meant to hear 'til the end of the song. (STREET DATE - 3/18/2016)

Meatbodies

S/t

In The Red

***Debut album available on vinyl again!!!!  Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork.  Loud, fast, wild—you’ve heard this all before but you haven’t because the Meatbodies are brand new and they’re going to dominate your eyes and ears and give you a bangover like you’ve never had before. Meatbodies initially came about as a solo project for Chad Ubovich after spending the last several years touring in other groups: In 2011, he was recruited by his friend Mikal Cronin to play bass, and eventually guitar, in Cronin’s band’s first ever tour. While Cronin strummed his twelve-string to his future classic pop songs, Ubovich howled alongside, adding his own brand of wolf-man style to Cronin’s live show. Heavy super-group Fuzz took notice of his on-stage prowess and recruited him to deliver Geezer Butler-style bass riffs that could propel Charles Moothart and Ty Segall’s songs through the stratosphere. While both of these bands have kept him busy over the past few years, his mind was always on his own songs. He would come home and secretly work on his own material—explosive, crunching, grinding songs with soaring melodies and gentle bridges cascading into torrents of riffs. Eventually he shared his work and allowed Segall to put out a tape of his bedroom recordings on his label God? Records. The tape was well received, so Ubovich recruited several friends with whom he could play around Los Angeles and San Francisco, and people began to see that he was more than just a sideman...

Meatbodies

Rotten / Mudgals

In The Red

Southern California's Meatbodies prime the pump for the release of their debut full-length with this single featuring two tracks. Both songs demonstrate the band's heavier, sludgier side and both destroy.Comes in a handsome full-color sleeve depicting real life Mudgals.

Meatbodies

Wahoo / Steps

In The Red

This is the debut single by the Meatbodies (formerly known as Chad & the Meatbodies) after having a cassette release on Ty Segall's God? label and a split single with Ty Segall on the Famous Class label. The Meatbodies are fronted by Chad Ubovich (he also plays bass in Fuzz) and have quickly gained a reputation as an amazing live band known for their fuzzed-out heavy psych rock. Look for another single and their debut album to follow later this year.