Seattle's Melvins' footnote in rock history rests on their huge influence on Kurt Cobain. In the mid-80s, so enamoured were the teenage Cobain and Kris Novoselic of the hometown metal trio that they adopted them as the musical template for Nirvana; Cobain frequently roadied for them.

Much revered but rarely seen, tonight the veteran band play their seminal 1993 album Houdini in its entirety for All Tomorrow's Parties' Don't Look Back festival. By then Nirvana were a global phenomenon, and Cobain co-produced Houdini as a partial return to the underground scene he valued so dearly.

It's immediately clear Melvins have not aged well, either musically or visually. Singer/guitarist Buzz Osbourne, the group's creative fulcrum, is now a porky figure buried beneath a voluminous grey Afro, resembling nothing so much as a grunge rock Don King. More telling is the band's complete lack of musical inventiveness. They play an inchoate, ponderous rock, heavily beholden to the sludge metal of Black Sabbath and utterly lacking in the melodies, poetry and insatiable yearning that Nirvana brought to the mix.

Cobain revered Melvins' authenticity, but while the bludgeoning riffs of Going Blind or the grotesque Hag Me may be cathartic, they are also preposterously boring. The lugubrious stoner metal of Goat Head could have been recorded any time between 1973 and today.

It's witless stuff that belies its creators' legendary status. Tonight, Don't Look Back appears to be eminently sensible advice.