Mr. Bungle (self-titled), 1991, Beat Me Up, Lord Music
Mr. Bungle is the self-titled 1991
debut from the
bizarre high-school band
Mike Patton kept alive even while he was achieving
fame and
fortune fronting
Faith No More. Mr. Bungle's
style is
impossible to
categorize except to call it a blend of
rock,
ska,
funk, and
insanity. Mike Patton's musical
lunacy comes through loud and clear, in a way that
Faith No More only approached on such songs as
Caffeine on the album
Angel Dust.
This album is
dark like the
woods behind a nighttime
carnival, which is where you go to
puke when you've gotten
sick on the
rides. It taps into the deep
humanity on display at any
circus or
carnival, revealing the
undercurrent of
fragility and
absurdity underneath the clown's make-up. It's got a
psychedelic feel that simultaneously
evokes the
wonder of being
alive at a carnival and the kind of
paranoia that you might feel if you were surrounded by slowly advancing clowns.
The
message isn't so much "
life is like a
carnival" as "life
is a carnival". That we are all, in our own ways, clowns,
masked,
good and
evil, walking
spectacles on display for the
world. That deep down, the feelings of
awe and
revulsion you might get walking through a
freakshow tent
reflect some dark,
unacknowledged discomfort with the
costumes of our own bizarre
egos.
The fears of
death and of being
alive guide this album from
start to
finish, as it
navigates through the carnival. This album is a veritable
tour of the
subconscious human mind, it's
dreamlike character enhanced by the
frequent transitions from one musical space to the next. We visit the realms of
childhood and
family,
sex,
violence,
perversion, and
insanity.
This album is a
trip, a musical ride on some aging carnival
contraption that is
scary more because of the
rust on the
bolts holding it together than for the ways it throws you around. If you don't have a
strong stomach, musically speaking, this album isn't for you. But if the idea of being tossed around in a
funhouse of humanity in care of the
prowess of Mr. Bungle's
remarkable musicianship and Mike Patton's
freakish vocals appeals to you, this album is a
must.