For many, Mr Bungle was just a trend, but for Mike Patton and his posse of retarded satanists, it was a nightmare, the soundtrack to the strangest film you've never wanted to see but always dreaded existed. The debut album was a video game cauldron of vomit, porn, junk food, trash, cartoons, masturbation and potty-humour...no-one really got it but they so desperately wanted to because it was connected to Faith No More. Sure, the debut album was genius, but the second record, 'Disco Volante' went a long...loooonnngggg way to alienate everyone, it was an awkward, stumbling, elusive, inconsistent and inhospitable lagoon beast, drenched in sarcasm, creating a world so far away that it portrayed no relation whatsoever to Patton's once cheeky, brattish behaviour, 'Disco...' was the biggest two-fingered poke to the world, and so the band, although remaining at cult status, would eventually simmer into the nether regions of Hell, never once coming close to re-creating the jazz-funk-epileptic odyssey of the debut album...but Bungle have no limits, and if they'd shifted 'California' onto the racks under a different name I'm pretty sure they'd have had some surefire big hits. This album is a classic, sounding nothing like either records that had gone before, instead being a mutated smorgasbord of Zappa-like oddness, Bacharach loungeness and continental razzamatazz. Often essential, nearly always remarkably catchy, but despite its summery gleam it plays you along like a cackling clown before locking you away in a dark room with the insects and the smell of sweat.
'Sweet Charity', bubbling, Twin Peaks-meets-sci-fi anthem, the chorus an absolute treasure, Patton barfing over the lyrics like some obese toon character fed upon small children and ice-cream whilst the band of merry magicians frolic with every instrument imaginable to produce a dreamy, surreal soundscape that conjures images of cool sands, swaying palm trees and rushing waters, before the dark clouds appear, ominously leering, waiting like a shark in the water before the psychobilly-disco-spazz workout of 'None Of Them Knew They Were Robots' swaggers in, trips over, somersaults, and for six-minutes leaves you back with the first album, and just when you think you can deal with time travel, the supreme 'Retrovertigo' rises like black smoke from a once sunshine bathed village, conspiracy, and weird incestuous relationships appearing on the t.v. screen like some 1950s commercial which has been dubbed with false technicolour where parents smile over a cooked dinner and the deepest horrors of life lurk in the bedroom waiting to molest your mind.
I can't really describe to you what Mr Bungle create, no-one really knows, because it's magic, randomly pick any track, from the wheezy cafe-fuck up 'Ars Moriendi' to smokey croon of 'Pink Cigarette', a swoon extracted from some film noir romance, and believe me, you should be scared, because this isn't done for fun. In all it's robotic, neurotic, psychotic and eccentric complexity, you're not meant to be on board. You're never welcome here. Sure, sing along to 'Vanity Fair', and fit and froth to 'Goodbye Sobre Day' like you knew all along it was a joke, but don't ever claim to be part of the game, the joke's always been on you.
10/10
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