Tony Ware has a review of the new album by Mr. Bungle, California (Warner Bros.) http://www.musicmanic.com/reportage/reportage.asp?ID=236 Mr. Bungle is the aural equivalent of watching Something Wicked This Way Comes or going to Coney Island high. Like any number of unsettling, strangely satisfying, Aphex Twin videos, wherever you look in Mr. Bungle's world, no matter what misshapen body (of work) you squint at, what's attached is Mike Patton's head. Formerly handling the vocals for Faith No More, Patton now bangs on the pipes full-time for Mr. Bungle. But for the first time, on Bungle's new release and first proper pop album California, Patton actually sings. Fuck Insane Clown Posse; Mr. Bungle's last album, Disco Volante, was the real Dark Carnival. Now Patton again takes on various guises as guide down a ghost shell of a Northern Californian boardwalk. California finds Patton sneering from behind the veneer of a barber shop quartet or straining at the tether of a microphone wire like an aggravated, shit-throwing monkey, tied to a devilish organ grinder's fits of epileptic rhythm. But most of the time Patton is a carnival barker daring you to trade your tickets, sweat-stained with fear, for the ride of a lifetime. And as calliope organs and crunchy guitars ebb and flow with lazy Hawaiian rhythm, the merry-go-wrong that is California sputters to life, chills spider up and down your spine and you imagine, through the cacophony, you hear Patton whispering "Beetlejuice ... Beetlejuice ... Beetle ..." Mr. Bungle plays Wednesday, August 11th, at the Cotton Club in Atlanta, and Friday, August 13th, at The State Theatre in Tampa, with grindcore mavens Dillinger Escape Plan opening.