CALIFORNIA

Mr. Bungle was simply the most important progressive rock band of the 90's. Despite a solid group of direct descendents and innumerable artists that have drawn from Bungle's genre-bending, no one has matched their colossal achievement. CALIFORNIA was the final installment in a trilogy of completely different but simultaneously brilliant albums. Gone is the potty mouth of the debut. Absent is the complete avant-garde aesthetic of DISCO VOLANTE. Instead, we get a more mature and accessible album of (gasp) - songs!!!

While lead singer Mike Patton does not have the prettiest voice in rock, he may have the most versatile instrument of all time. And never is he more melodic than on CALIFORNIA. The bombastic opener "Sweet Charity" has a hummable chorus along with vocal percussion accents. Show music, surf guitars, and even klezmer ideas infuse the album and push the metal of previous albums a bit to the side. As a result, this is the "lightest" of the Bungle albums. Rest assured, there are still sections of pure chaos. "None of Them Knew They Were Robots" takes us from a peyote trip in the desert to a night club in Vegas to the Cantina on Tatooine within the space of 30 seconds. Though there are very heavy parts, most of the song is free of guitar distortion. The closer "Goodbye Sober Day" is one of the best pure music tracks I've ever heard. It literally has almost everything. If some asked me "what song do you wish you had written" I would either say "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" or "Goodbye Sober Day." It's that good.

The extreme eclecticism of this album makes it yet another shock to those who came to Bungle from the metal route via Faith No More. Most casual fans would have jumped ship after DISCO VOLANTE, but even this silly fanboy took awhile to really get into this album. The theatrics and non-rock ethic take awhile. I could also see some coming a jazz / avant angle feeling that sections are simply too "straight." Listening to the full album would destroy that notion, but again this album deceptively listener-friendly in relationship to the band's larger body of work.

I've written more extensively on Bungle in my other two reviews, but the bottom line is that all 3 are essential to understanding the progression of metal and experimental music in general in the 90's. 5/5.

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