Mr. Bungle Disco Volante (Warner Bros.)

Mr. Bungle, Mike Patton’s (Faith No More) other band, has finally released its second album, Disco Volante. But fans of Faith No More who pick this up solely for Patton’s involvement better save their receipts.

While the first album was filled with tough samples and gristly stretches of annoying filler, there was enough meat of good funk/metal on the bone to ensure a good meal. The new disc continues in the direction of the bizarre, but it goes way past the threshold of patience with its sample-happy babble minus the inclusion of music.

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There is hardly anything on Disco Volante that could be considered a song, at least in the traditional sense. It is a twisted ride on a roller coaster through a house of horrors; leering clown faces stare back from funhouse mirrors, filling the stomach with the nausea of a bad sandwich eaten in a psychedelicatessen.

The songs switch rhythms and samples rapidly like the thoughts of a child with attention deficit disorder. There is no flow to the structures; metal instantly switches to 70s detective theme show music narrated by a hoarse Grampa Simpson in Carry Stress in the Jaw, while Violenza Domestica begins with the sound of sharpening knives that evolves into a demented waltz with Italian vocals.

Disco Volante is very disturbing in its originality and variety. It’s one thing to separate yourself from the pack, but to be bizarre for the sake of being bizarre doesn’t accomplish much, either.

In the search for new and exciting forms of music, some enterprising artists have combined two existing forms of high-energy music metal and industrial dance. First came groups like KMFDM, Malhavoc and Godflesh, then the more successful White Zombie, and now Fear Factory comes to join the dance party. The production of Rhys Fulber, of the industrial unit Front Line Assembly, doesn’t leave as much of a mark as he should have. This combination of primeval rage and technical ecstacy is much more death metal than industrial dance, and the death metal is of the generic sort.

While drum machines can play faster and more intricately than human beings, the mechanized sound detracts from the intended heavy effect. Vocalist Burton C. Bell tries to emulate a gothic tone in his occasional attempt at singing (as opposed to his constant barking), but it comes across more like strangulation than Joy Division. Ambient industrial beginnings predictably fade into growls and triplet guitar notes. Most of the time, the industrial and metal bits seem to argue rather than blend together.

As far as the vocals go, I have seen better poems in third grade competitions.

Some advice for Fear Factory:Stick with metal; your experimentation doesn’t work.

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