By Mitch Joel, November 1999
Mr Bungle, the group known as "the other band" of former Faith No More frontman Mike Patton, has been successful in sidetracking anything remotely close to a rehashing of FNMs brilliant metal legacy. Instead, Bar (horns, Keyboards), Trevor Dunn (bass, keyboards), Danny Heifetz (percussion, keyboards), Trey Spruance (guitar, keyboards) and Patton have scraped out odd little bits of earwax for people who like the sound of Sinatra on vinyl, Queen on CD and the Chemical Brothers on chemicals.
Anyone wondering about the viability of such an endeavour need only be pointed in the directiom of their current - and third - disc, California (their self-titled debut appeared in 1991; the second, Disco Volante, came in '95), the popularity of which has fuelled the band's growth to the point where their upcoming Montreal Cabaret date has been super-sized to Metropolis.
With respect to California, Spruance feels like the songwriting was the easy part. "The production of our albums always gets completely overlooked", he says from their tour bus. "The production takes a lot more work and a lot more time and a lot more thought. The creative angle, or our songwriting, is special too. We have a peculiar way of doing things, and when you combine the two, the overlap is pretty severe. It's fairly clear, when a Mr Bungle song is written, what the full-blown end product should be....but we'll stop at nothing to get it to that point".