Sadly not the most prolific bands,
but Mr. Bungle went from Mike Patton's high school band to fame,
making the world a better place through their weird meshing of various music
genres in the same song let alone the same album. Their demo albums are a
tantalising what-if for me to heard, but they only released three official
albums before they sadly disappeared off the face of the earth. (And sadly we
can probably blame Anthony Kiedis
from Red Hot Chilli Peppers for some
of this). The truly strange metal of their self-titled, John Zorn produced debut (1991), the difficult, very experimental
second album Disco Volante (1995) which I am still trying to grasp, and my favourite, California (1999). California takes the debut's stew of various musical types but
makes the songs significantly shorter, somehow taking the weirdness of Butthole Surfers and their predecessors
and making it poppy without compromising their unpredictability.
The following above is a great
example of this, more so when you discover what the lyrics are like I have
recently. Disco rock by way of various tangents and Jewish mythology, and it
should've been a Top Ten hit like most of the songs on the album. That Patton would go on to be part of various
other bands, and also found Fantômas,
is like the as-of-yet unopened gift that keeps on giving to me.
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