DISCO VOLANTE

After becoming a firm FNM fan in early 1996, when I found out about Mike Patton's other project, 'Mr. Bungle' I raced out to buy their records. This was the first I listened to, and I found it's thrashy, screechy opening track quite a turn-off. So I vouched to listen to the songs with interesting names - and so began a love for a band that I never thought would ever come about. The band works together brilliantly and combines hard metal with rhythmic jazz in unexpected places all over the record. The range is genuinely astonishing - from the creepy 'After School Special' (the ending to which is the most surreal thing I have ever heard) to the near-pleasant 'Merry Go Bye Bye' a song with melody and happy beats cut short by a bridge of some fantastic death metal riffs. This record either has the listener unable to resist shifting about in its excellent rhthym (quiyamat insan al kahmil) or dumbfounded by it's beauty (dotted about in places like 'Violenza Domestica). Personally, my favourite is the second (uncredited) song on track 3 - 'Secret Song'. In short this album rocks. But, as this point has been made before, it won't hurt to stress that you really do have to be tremendously open-minded about it...