Mudvayne is an American heavy metal band formed in Peoria, Illinois, in 1996, consisting of vocalist Chad Gray, guitarist Greg Tribbett, drummer Matthew McDonough, and bassist Ryan Martinie — a band that arrived at the turn of the millennium with a debut album so musically ambitious and sonically unusual that it shifted what listeners and critics expected from heavy music, and then spent the better part of a decade building a catalog of three gold-certified albums before an unannounced hiatus that lasted over a decade. They formed in a Peoria basement, refused from the start to play cover songs in a Midwest scene where that was nearly the only way to make money, and built their identity through original material and increasingly elaborate theatrical presentation: face paint, body paint, masks, and costumes worn onstage with a visual commitment that matched the sonic one.
Ryan Martinie joined as bassist in 1998, replacing original bassist Shawn Barclay, and his addition was the final element that defined the band's sound — a style combining progressive metal construction, groove-heavy rhythms, and Martinie's technically extraordinary, melody-driven bass playing that would make him one of the most discussed bassists in early 2000s heavy music. L.D. 50 (2000) on Epic Records was their debut, and the lead single Dig won the first ever MTV2 Award at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards — the band arriving at the ceremony in white suits with bloody bullet-hole makeup on their foreheads, a moment that encapsulated their approach. L.D. 50 was certified gold and is widely considered one of the most innovative albums in the nu-metal era, alongside Tool's Lateralus in its ambition to push the genre toward something more compositionally demanding. The End of All Things to Come (2002), produced by David Bottrill, was also certified gold and produced Not Falling, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance. Lost and Found (2005) debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, went gold, and received a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance for the single Determined. Forget to Remember from the same album appeared on the Saw II soundtrack. The New Game (2008) and the self-titled Mudvayne (2009) continued the run before the band went on hiatus in 2010, with Chad Gray and Greg Tribbett focusing on Hellyeah — the supergroup formed with Pantera and Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott and members of Nothingface. The band has sold over six million records worldwide.
The reunion came in 2021 when the classic four-piece played their first show in twelve years at Inkcarceration Festival in Ohio on September 11, 2021, and subsequently headlined major rock festivals and toured alongside Rob Zombie and Megadeth. On August 28, 2025, they released Hurt People Hurt People, their first new recording in sixteen years. Martinie's bass intro to Dig became an unlikely internet meme — the onomatopoeia "brbr-DENG" — which Martinie himself described as baffling but gratifying.
Wayne Dennon photographed Mudvayne as part of an archive that documents heavy music at its most inventive. Mudvayne were a band from central Illinois who refused to do what was easy, built something genuinely distinctive out of technical ambition and theatrical commitment, and earned an audience that never forgot them even through a decade of silence.
