Mr. Bungle is one of the world's favorite cult bands. They never sold much during their original 1985-2004 run - vocalist Mike Patton had more success with his rapidly-turning-avant-garde stint in Faith No More and his myriad of side projects - and they rarely wrote any songs, instead relying on warped cover songs during their concerts. They had approx. 40 songs to their name, whereas other bands would have up to 60 songs with their first three records. Some songs got reworked into others while others were outright re-recorded for their Warner Bros.-era albums. And hell, every break they got was riddled with disaster - Warner wanted to initially promote the band as an offshoot of the John Zorn/Naked City, tying them with the more mainstream (not by much) efforts of Boredoms and Zorn himself just because the latter produced their debut. Don't expect a reunion any time soon - they've written out that option because of bad blood between every member of the band.
However, people are listening to these guys more than ever. California is regularly considered one of the finest alternative rock records of all time while their more experimental offerings (a.k.a their first two major-label records) have a decent fanbase. I'm one of those fans myself, having got into the band by those aforementioned records. Because I've relistened to all of their albums recently, I feel that it's one of my duties to inform people about the wonders of Mr. Bungle even though everybody's heard about them. The 1985-1989 demos will not be included due to my lack of interest in them and the agreed opinion that they just aren't that good. Then again, OU818 is pretty good in its own twisted amateurish way.
1. Mr. Bungle (Warner Bros., 1991)
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Mr. Bungle started off as a comedy rock band that wasn't exactly funny, a metal band that played too much calliope-inspired funk rock for its own good, and Faith No More-inspired art rockers who went above and beyond the call of duty by playing some of the most challenging music of the 1990s. Lyrically disturbing with songs about bullied teenagers who develop Oedipus complexes and kill themselves by autoerotic asphyxiation, limbless deformities that rely on drugs and their sense of smell to create false illusions where they shake their butt like John Travolta, and abusive relationships (but presented in a darkly comic way), Mr. Bungle should be a great record. It's the purest record the band has done - before the genrefuckery reached its all-time-high with Disco Volante and they ventured into an art-pop direction with California - and its riffs are nothing short of spectacular if not better than Jim Martin's similarly-innovative stuff written around that time in Faith No More. Mike's schizophrenic vocalizations are masterfully executed, the saxophone interplay between Theo Lengyel (now an IT specialist in north California) and Clinton McKinnon nearly tops Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman's '60s free-jazz stuff, and Trevor Dunn is simply one of the best bassists in rock.
However, the record is way too long. I don't know if it's because John Zorn wanted it to be an outright comedy metal ordeal or if the interludes were necessary transitions during the band's concerts during that era, but compared to their demos and their later records, Mr. Bungle's length is not justified. The interludes are extraneous and often make little sense regarding the lyrical content of the song ("Love is a Fist," the song about abusive relationships, ends with an interlude directly sampled from that educational video about that kid named Mr. Bungle who makes a mess in the lunch room - which is a total mood shift that doesn't make sense given the songs it separates) and are obviously put there to lengthen the record to 70 minutes. Yes, I get it - you guys want to make the longest single vinyl ever. It sounds terrible, but you guys succeeded. On CD, it doesn't really work. These songs would flow much better if I didn't have to hear you guys jump trains and then hear Theo and Clinton honk their saxophones and then hear Mike Patton shit into a toilet on a coffee break AND THEN hear the band celebrate while Frank Booth quotes from Blue Velvet play in the background (WHERE'S MY FUCKING BEER) AND THEN hear Super Mario Bros. samples AND THEN...you get the idea. 10 minutes of this record could easily be cut and it would be more listenable.
If it weren't for those interludes, I'd love Mr. Bungle with all my heart. However, I have to settle with a 4/5. The interludes really impair the music.
2. Disco Volante (Warner Bros., 1995)
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The album opens with a track titled "Everyone I Went to High School with Is Dead." That alone should signal that what you're about to hear is one of the best albums ever made. It's a death metal dirge about moving on from your childhood and letting go of your so-called friends from high school - and a proper send-off to Mike's high school buddy Theo, who would later leave the band after touring for this album. It's also an effective opener to the depraved mix of space-age pop, thrash metal, the embryonic seeds of what would become the California aesthetic, and cartoon music that Disco Volante offers. From the get-go, the listener isn't soothed into the status quo of circus-inspired funk metal that Mr. Bungle is - instead, the band outright mixes genres within the same song, scaring the shit out of them with these off-putting mixes. It's still obviously metal - the band can rock out nicely - but it's more like Fantomas-level metal as opposed to Faith No More with dark lyrics about suicide. Lyrically, the record's calmed down a tad - the songs mainly focus on non-violent subjects like nightmares, nasal congestion, platypuses, how cliched the concept of celebrity is, Trevor Dunn making a hissy fit over not playing a song on the record, and a guy who overcomes the absolute pain of the bends and survives, though there are songs about rape ("After School Special"), abusive relationships ("Violenza Domestica"), drug use ("Chemical Marriage"), and depravity within religious texts ("Desert Search for Techno Allah").
Musically, it's the band's most complex record - and their most interesting. You're enthralled by the uneven mix of genres within the music that you have to listen to more - see what Mr. Bungle's gotten themselves into. The arrangements are incredibly demanding on all fronts - the saxophone lines are Ornette-like with their rapid arpeggios and wild nature, the bass goes up and down the fret at all times, Mike's vocals have him putting on a massive amount of voices per minute, and the guitar is played in one go despite acting like a Joe Meek production one second and a Chuck Schuldiner riff the next. It's maddening, really - and it's meant to be. While Mr. Bungle was darkly funny with its sympathetic-but-satirical depictions of depraved human beings, Disco Volante is like peeking into the newspaper just to read countless stories about violence, rape, and endless human insanity. So much so that it makes anybody insane. It feels like a James Bond film from Hell at times - the film's all warped, Tom Jones is drunk as shit and derailing his train into a nuclear power plant, and Roger Moore's getting shot up by every antagonist within the Bond series before being tortured by the Timothy Dalton-era villains.
With challenging music and a consistent tone, Disco Volante is the band's first great record in their major-label career. It makes one wonder, "How in the flying fuck did Warner Bros keep this band on their roster? Faith No More record sales had dropped at the time, so people weren't interested in Mike Patton as a celebrity. So why?"
3. California (Warner Bros., 1999)
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Mr. Bungle goes pop. Well, not in the traditional sense, but this album is more cohesive and approachable than their prior efforts. Mostly rid of the dark humor of Mr. Bungle and the shock value of Disco Volante, the band takes on a whole new approach by mixing their genres in such a seamless manner that it makes the album consistent. Sure, there are tracks like "Ars Moriendi" and "Golem II" where they have distinct genres (avant-metal and Krautrock-inspired New Wave art pop, respectively), but the album for the most is a listenable mix of surf rock, sunshine pop, alternative metal, doo-wop, and progressive pop done in such a way that the band has invented its own genre for the album to go under. However, for easier categorization, it's considered an "experimental rock" record. However, it rarely feels experimental - just quirky, that's all. The music isn't as demanding - hell, songs like "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," "Pink Cigarette," and "Vanity Fair" can easily be learned on a single instrument with requiring a lot of time to absorb all the nuances of the performance (to play it by the book). "Pink Cigarette" can be played at a coffee shop and people would dig it up until the part where Mike calmly counts down to his imminent death. Lyrically, the album's consistent - rather than being an odd mix of social commentary and funny little songs, the band mainly comments on the injustices of society without throwing away their quirkiness and goofiness. You occasionally get songs like "Golem II" which comment on mythology, but make it in such a way that it's hard not to dance to.
The band is at its most cohesive here - and yet, they were on the verge of splitting up during the recording of this record - due to the less-abrasive genrefuckery present on the record. Mike feels more at home on the mike, using his voice to comment on how nightmarish the scenarios on California are as opposed to scaring everybody by screaming about Australian mammals. Trevor Dunn's bass-playing is more relaxed without losing its technicality, Trey Spruance's guitar continues the liberal usage of effects he started on Disco Volante while toning it down significantly, and Clinton makes up for Theo's absence by playing some inventive keyboard lines. It's easier to love this iteration of the band than the prior ones - they're not too goofy, nor are they too scary. They're in the middle - a goofy-scary prog-sunshine-surf-metal outfit.
Words cannot describe in detail how good California is. They just can't. With that in mind, here's the album. Enjoy:
In conclusion, Mr. Bungle is God. Worship them now.
However, people are listening to these guys more than ever. California is regularly considered one of the finest alternative rock records of all time while their more experimental offerings (a.k.a their first two major-label records) have a decent fanbase. I'm one of those fans myself, having got into the band by those aforementioned records. Because I've relistened to all of their albums recently, I feel that it's one of my duties to inform people about the wonders of Mr. Bungle even though everybody's heard about them. The 1985-1989 demos will not be included due to my lack of interest in them and the agreed opinion that they just aren't that good. Then again, OU818 is pretty good in its own twisted amateurish way.
1. Mr. Bungle (Warner Bros., 1991)
Mr. Bungle started off as a comedy rock band that wasn't exactly funny, a metal band that played too much calliope-inspired funk rock for its own good, and Faith No More-inspired art rockers who went above and beyond the call of duty by playing some of the most challenging music of the 1990s. Lyrically disturbing with songs about bullied teenagers who develop Oedipus complexes and kill themselves by autoerotic asphyxiation, limbless deformities that rely on drugs and their sense of smell to create false illusions where they shake their butt like John Travolta, and abusive relationships (but presented in a darkly comic way), Mr. Bungle should be a great record. It's the purest record the band has done - before the genrefuckery reached its all-time-high with Disco Volante and they ventured into an art-pop direction with California - and its riffs are nothing short of spectacular if not better than Jim Martin's similarly-innovative stuff written around that time in Faith No More. Mike's schizophrenic vocalizations are masterfully executed, the saxophone interplay between Theo Lengyel (now an IT specialist in north California) and Clinton McKinnon nearly tops Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman's '60s free-jazz stuff, and Trevor Dunn is simply one of the best bassists in rock.
However, the record is way too long. I don't know if it's because John Zorn wanted it to be an outright comedy metal ordeal or if the interludes were necessary transitions during the band's concerts during that era, but compared to their demos and their later records, Mr. Bungle's length is not justified. The interludes are extraneous and often make little sense regarding the lyrical content of the song ("Love is a Fist," the song about abusive relationships, ends with an interlude directly sampled from that educational video about that kid named Mr. Bungle who makes a mess in the lunch room - which is a total mood shift that doesn't make sense given the songs it separates) and are obviously put there to lengthen the record to 70 minutes. Yes, I get it - you guys want to make the longest single vinyl ever. It sounds terrible, but you guys succeeded. On CD, it doesn't really work. These songs would flow much better if I didn't have to hear you guys jump trains and then hear Theo and Clinton honk their saxophones and then hear Mike Patton shit into a toilet on a coffee break AND THEN hear the band celebrate while Frank Booth quotes from Blue Velvet play in the background (WHERE'S MY FUCKING BEER) AND THEN hear Super Mario Bros. samples AND THEN...you get the idea. 10 minutes of this record could easily be cut and it would be more listenable.
If it weren't for those interludes, I'd love Mr. Bungle with all my heart. However, I have to settle with a 4/5. The interludes really impair the music.
2. Disco Volante (Warner Bros., 1995)
The album opens with a track titled "Everyone I Went to High School with Is Dead." That alone should signal that what you're about to hear is one of the best albums ever made. It's a death metal dirge about moving on from your childhood and letting go of your so-called friends from high school - and a proper send-off to Mike's high school buddy Theo, who would later leave the band after touring for this album. It's also an effective opener to the depraved mix of space-age pop, thrash metal, the embryonic seeds of what would become the California aesthetic, and cartoon music that Disco Volante offers. From the get-go, the listener isn't soothed into the status quo of circus-inspired funk metal that Mr. Bungle is - instead, the band outright mixes genres within the same song, scaring the shit out of them with these off-putting mixes. It's still obviously metal - the band can rock out nicely - but it's more like Fantomas-level metal as opposed to Faith No More with dark lyrics about suicide. Lyrically, the record's calmed down a tad - the songs mainly focus on non-violent subjects like nightmares, nasal congestion, platypuses, how cliched the concept of celebrity is, Trevor Dunn making a hissy fit over not playing a song on the record, and a guy who overcomes the absolute pain of the bends and survives, though there are songs about rape ("After School Special"), abusive relationships ("Violenza Domestica"), drug use ("Chemical Marriage"), and depravity within religious texts ("Desert Search for Techno Allah").
Musically, it's the band's most complex record - and their most interesting. You're enthralled by the uneven mix of genres within the music that you have to listen to more - see what Mr. Bungle's gotten themselves into. The arrangements are incredibly demanding on all fronts - the saxophone lines are Ornette-like with their rapid arpeggios and wild nature, the bass goes up and down the fret at all times, Mike's vocals have him putting on a massive amount of voices per minute, and the guitar is played in one go despite acting like a Joe Meek production one second and a Chuck Schuldiner riff the next. It's maddening, really - and it's meant to be. While Mr. Bungle was darkly funny with its sympathetic-but-satirical depictions of depraved human beings, Disco Volante is like peeking into the newspaper just to read countless stories about violence, rape, and endless human insanity. So much so that it makes anybody insane. It feels like a James Bond film from Hell at times - the film's all warped, Tom Jones is drunk as shit and derailing his train into a nuclear power plant, and Roger Moore's getting shot up by every antagonist within the Bond series before being tortured by the Timothy Dalton-era villains.
With challenging music and a consistent tone, Disco Volante is the band's first great record in their major-label career. It makes one wonder, "How in the flying fuck did Warner Bros keep this band on their roster? Faith No More record sales had dropped at the time, so people weren't interested in Mike Patton as a celebrity. So why?"
3. California (Warner Bros., 1999)
Mr. Bungle goes pop. Well, not in the traditional sense, but this album is more cohesive and approachable than their prior efforts. Mostly rid of the dark humor of Mr. Bungle and the shock value of Disco Volante, the band takes on a whole new approach by mixing their genres in such a seamless manner that it makes the album consistent. Sure, there are tracks like "Ars Moriendi" and "Golem II" where they have distinct genres (avant-metal and Krautrock-inspired New Wave art pop, respectively), but the album for the most is a listenable mix of surf rock, sunshine pop, alternative metal, doo-wop, and progressive pop done in such a way that the band has invented its own genre for the album to go under. However, for easier categorization, it's considered an "experimental rock" record. However, it rarely feels experimental - just quirky, that's all. The music isn't as demanding - hell, songs like "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," "Pink Cigarette," and "Vanity Fair" can easily be learned on a single instrument with requiring a lot of time to absorb all the nuances of the performance (to play it by the book). "Pink Cigarette" can be played at a coffee shop and people would dig it up until the part where Mike calmly counts down to his imminent death. Lyrically, the album's consistent - rather than being an odd mix of social commentary and funny little songs, the band mainly comments on the injustices of society without throwing away their quirkiness and goofiness. You occasionally get songs like "Golem II" which comment on mythology, but make it in such a way that it's hard not to dance to.
The band is at its most cohesive here - and yet, they were on the verge of splitting up during the recording of this record - due to the less-abrasive genrefuckery present on the record. Mike feels more at home on the mike, using his voice to comment on how nightmarish the scenarios on California are as opposed to scaring everybody by screaming about Australian mammals. Trevor Dunn's bass-playing is more relaxed without losing its technicality, Trey Spruance's guitar continues the liberal usage of effects he started on Disco Volante while toning it down significantly, and Clinton makes up for Theo's absence by playing some inventive keyboard lines. It's easier to love this iteration of the band than the prior ones - they're not too goofy, nor are they too scary. They're in the middle - a goofy-scary prog-sunshine-surf-metal outfit.
Words cannot describe in detail how good California is. They just can't. With that in mind, here's the album. Enjoy:
In conclusion, Mr. Bungle is God. Worship them now.