Inappropriate reviews

 —  Mr. Bungle are truly a legendary group. Their impact and influence is usually more than one realizes. Their sound is often duplicated, you can hear it in The Mars Volta, Primus and Incubus among other bands.

An amalgamation of sounds and styles, Disco Volante is treated more as an experience than a chunk of songs. Mr. Bungle is simply playing out what they've heard throughout their lives and transmitting it through their instruments the way they felt about it. That's the essence of Disco Volante. Mr. Bungle is presenting with extreme instrumental dexterity, how to create challenging yet interestingly accessible music.

Twisted techno, gritty surf, poetry, and pure noise bliss are among the themes of Disco Volante. Mike Patton's chameleon-like throat can compliment just about anything that Mr. Bungle pulls off, and very well, and Mr. Bungle touches a LOT of sounds. Desert Search For Techno Allah is a dirty funky mixture remeniscent of Eastern music and Herbie Hancock funk breakdancing music, while None of Them Knew They Were Robots proves to be a sludging doom chant, bursting into Chemical Marriage where each member of the band in the same key plays the words of an Edgar Allen Poe poem. Then comes Carry Stress in the jaw, which features virtuoso playing all over with great melody, and then seguing into "The Secret Song" where are a throaty sounding character remeniscent of Buckethead's Bucketheadland gravekeeper (it might be Patton!) gets kicked out of the band. All of this is pulled off with flying colors!

The middle section of the album kicks off with Violenza Domestica, replete with eating utensils scraping against eachother, jittering, Black Sabbath doom chords, and horror polka. "Pasta pasta!" the unnamed character of this mini-story exclaims as doomy Italian restaurant music blasts throughout the background. After School Special is definitely hilarious, serious music combined with the most random theme, a teenager bragging about his parents (is it that?) Those two combined make a pleasantly uneasy song. Now we're led to Phlegmatics, a thrash metal extravaganza, but only for a few seconds of course due to Mr. Bungle's bipolar nature. The song then segues into a drudging pirate-like anthem hinting back at None of Them Knew They Were Robots, but then slightly touching on free jazz before jumping back to thrash. Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz features more avant-garde vocals from Patton combined with bubbly high-octane funk with instruments you have never heard before traveling upstream in a fast funky melody, remeniscent of the first Bungle album.

The final section of the album starts with a sea-themed genre-jumping mood-inducing ten-part monster called The Bends, the psychedelic part of the album, it's pulled off well because of the overall sound is consistent and each part represents something different and it doesn't get old due to the cool effects and ideas within, some of it sounds like The Residents! It eventually reaches an intense climax and drops into Backstrokin', which is thematically the second part here of The Bends. It's effective as it blasts into Platypus which off the start Clinton the drummer is tearing it up. It's mostly a fusiony piece with lots of Weather Reporty improvisation and structure. Merry Go Bye Bye is so distinctive to the rest of the album and upbeat, that it leaves the album on a cool note. Or does it? The experimentation in Merry Go Bye Bye is among the most intense on the whole album, it's a let-loose freakout, being a culmination of almost the entire album before it turns into a live studio mess, reminding me of The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet from Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention.

Thank God for whoever let Mr. Bungle have a studio and a record deal, because maybe nothing else in the '90's showed musicians how to progress music as we know it, and as players. A complete freakout with as much substance as you can imagine. A masterpiece, Mr. Bungle is undoubtedly a freaky continuation of where a lot of old fusion and symphonic bands left off progressively.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twisted techno, gritty surf, poetry, and pure noise bliss are among the themes of Disco Volante. Mike Patton's chameleon-like throat can compliment just about anything that Mr. Bungle pulls off, and very well, and Mr. Bungle touches a LOT of sounds. Desert Search For Techno Allah is a dirty funky mixture remeniscent of Eastern music and Herbie Hancock funk breakdancing music. Chemical Marriage, where each member of the band in the same key plays the words of an Edgar Allen Poe poem. Then comes Carry Stress in the jaw, which features virtuoso playing all over with great melody, and then seguing into "The Secret Song" where are a throaty sounding character remeniscent of Buckethead's Bucketheadland gravekeeper (it might be Patton!) gets kicked out of the band. All of this is pulled off with flying colors!

The middle section of the album kicks off with Violenza Domestica, replete with eating utensils scraping against eachother, jittering, Black Sabbath doom chords, and horror polka. "Pasta pasta!" the unnamed character of this mini-story exclaims as doomy Italian restaurant music blasts throughout the background. After School Special is definitely hilarious, serious music combined with the most random theme, a teenager bragging about his parents (is it that?) Those two combined make a pleasantly uneasy song. Now we're led to Phlegmatics, a thrash metal extravaganza, but only for a few seconds of course due to Mr. Bungle's bipolar nature, then slightly touching on free jazz before jumping back to thrash. Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz features more avant-garde vocals from Patton combined with bubbly high-octane funk with instruments you have never heard before traveling upstream in a fast funky melody, remeniscent of the first Bungle album.

 

 

 —  The Trip is an English band transplanted in Italy and so is not correct to talk about Italian Symphonic Prog. Surely all five tracks I put them on the same plan. And I should say that they are large songs. The work og organ (above in "Prologo") is very good and effective. This album the advice to the fans of the ELP, that there will find, surely, bread for their toeeh.

 

 

This review is not correct. He said that THE TRIP was an English band!

No, TRIP were half English (Arvid Andersen, William Gray), half Italian (Joe Vescovi, Pino Sinnone, Furio Chirico).

   I read this on Progarchives.com as a definition of Progressive Metal : "Progressive metal (shortened to prog, or prog metal when differentiating from progressive rock) is a heavy brand of progressive rock which is characterized by the use of complex compositional structures, odd time signatures, and other features. (...) The result could be described as a progressive rock mentality with heavy metal sounds."

More : "Progressive rock ("prog") is an ambitious, eclectic, and often grandiose style of rock music. (...) Progressive rock artists sought to move away from the limitations of radio formatted rock and pop, and "progress" rock (...)".

Well, I do not find anything Progressive in that music. Of course, sometimes, the mood change and gets quiet, but it is NOT ambitious or eclectic, it's acoustic guitar. For my ears, this is much more Death Metal than Prog Metal. Also, this music could play on some students' radio stations because of its easy and predictable melodic structures and rythmes.

My 10 year old kid said : " You listen to Death Metal daddy ? ". The thruth comes out.

And as I walk through this site, there are SO (TOO?) MANY albums with 5 stars... This is supposed to be reserved to albums you would carry with you on a desert island. Like there are 10 of them. As per now, we will have a music store on that island, stuffed with bad music.

This Death Metal music is not bad, is gives a lot a energy, but this is not progressive music. Be aware !