Released: 1999
Tracks: Sweet Charity; None of Them Knew They Were Robots; Retrovertigo; The Air-Conditioned Nightmare; Ars Moriendi; Pink Cigarette; Golem II: The Bionic Vapour Boy; The Holy Filament; Vanity Fair; Goodbye Sober Day
Best track: Retrovertigo
Track to skip: none!
As of this writing California is the only Mr. Bungle album I own. One day someone will look at the two before and this one may not make too much sense. Oh well. The first Mr. Bungle I heard was some tracks from the first album and then eventually a few off this one as well. I know back in the day (1991) when the first Mr. Bungle album came out a lot of people were referring to it as Mike Patton’s ‘side project’. Whatever. What I’ve always heard is that Bungle was his actual main gig while Faith No More was the said ‘side project’. Again, whatever. The point is, this band sounds nothing like Faith No More. I like FNM, but Mr. Bungle blows the pants off them. This music is seriously insane. They actually do have some ‘normal’ tracks on this album (about half), but most of their music is still Out There. I don’t mean to say this is a bad thing at all, because listening to music and musicians who push things so far and break all the rules is truly exciting. The way the band combines completely different types of music into one ‘song’ is pretty shocking. I still hear stuff on this album and go “What?!?!” They like to change gears about every 10 seconds, going from swing jazz to surf guitar to thrash metal to doo-wop to stuff that sounds like demented circus music. It’s extremely startling, but also encouraging and completely inspiring.
Half of these songs are the weird genre-hopping excursions, and the other half are pretty straight-forward slower material that show how the band can write some incredible ‘normal’ songs. I’m not sure if it’s Mike Patton who writes all the vocal melodies, but since he’s the one singing them I’ll single him out. The vocal melodies on this album blow my mind. OK, all the melodies really. The vocal ones in Retrovertigo, the musical ones in Holy Filament… all of them. Patton is a true vocalist and has such a wide range of singing styles. It sure helps things that he’s got a great and distinctive voice anyway. The other guys in the band (Trevor Dunn, Danny Heifetz, Bär McKinnon & Trey Spruance) all equally contribute to the incredible musicianship and excellent songs. I actually think Trevor Dunn might be the best songwriter of the lot as Retrovertigo and Holy Filament are his. Point is, all of these guys contribute and Mr. Bungle isn’t just a Mike Patton band. You know, I love this album and I think this band is really far ahead of most ‘rock’ music. You could kinda say they’re the rock equivalent of John Zorn’s Naked City (who actually push things farther than Bungle does, yet). I highly recommend this to open minded listeners, especially those who are tired of all the usual rock and pop music out there. Be warned: this music is very challenging, but also rewarding on every listen.
Rating: 94
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