GREEN NAUGAHYDE

Les and Larry from Primus returned after a leave of absence and was joined by Jay Lane as new drummer. Jay had worked with Les before with other bands and also as a session musician. His drumming style fits right with the quirkiness of Primus' sound and works very well. The sound of the album is reminiscent of the better Primus albums, which is a great thing. The only thing really lacking here is that the vocals are kind of pushed back into the mix and not so upfront as they were before. This can at times give Les' vocals a softer sound. Other than this, it's still the same great Primus sound as before, heavy on the bass, crazy on the guitar and drums, off the wall on the lyrics. That's what we all love about Primus.

We start off with a short introduction and immediately are whisked into the zaniness of the band with the rousing opener "Hennepin Crawler". Immediately we see that Primus has returned, but it's obvious that the vocals are not as up front as before. "Last Salmon Man" is part of the Fisherman's Chronicles and is more of a blues done Primus style song, a lot like the Fisherman's Chronicle song on "Sailing the Seas of Cheese", at least in style, but otherwise it is a song of it's own and one of the standouts on here. "Eternal Consumption Engine" is a cool and whacky sounding song, "Tragedy's a Comin'" is a funky-upbeat extravaganza. Up to this point, the songs don't fail to disappoint.

Next you have "Eyes of the Squirrel" which is a funny way to think of big brother, and the most of the last half of this song moves into space rock territory with it's shift to psycehdelia Primus style. This sound continues and opens up the next track with a different psychedelic sound before the lyrics finally start well into the song. "Extinction Burst" is another great standout track, heavy on the bass, funk, crazy guitar with some whacked out reggae back beat among the chaos, and a cool start-stop instrumental break at the end which develops into a great guitar solo and Primus style jam. The rest of the album follows suit with both great music and a few not so great ones, but overall, it is better than "Antipop" which wasn't bad, just not as good as before.

There isn't a lot of progression in the sound here other than just returning to the quirkiness of before, no real change. As much as I love Primus, it would be nice to have something new and exciting and not always the same sound. Yes they still go off on their usual zany songs and have cool surprises, but overall, it's the same sound as before. I love the sound, yes, but a little more exploration and inventiveness would have made this a 5 star album. Yes it's got the usual progressive sound as before, it just doesn't progress beyond the typical Primus sound. It's still an excellent album though, so 4 stars is what it gets.