Mr. Bungle

Mr. Bungle, the influential and celebrated avant-rock band from Eureka, CA, mirrored the whimsical tastes of its frontman, Mike Patton. While he would go on to front bands like Faith No More, Fantômas and Tomahawk, the singer first brought his eclectic energy to Bungle, which emerged in 1985 as a death-metal band, before quickly expanding into a number of disparate genres—left-field jazz, funk, pop, ska, R&B and more—they weaved together effortlessly. The band signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1990 thanks to Patton’s success in Faith No More, which the group parlayed into three experimental-rock-defining albums over the next decade. Those included their 1991 debut album, Mr. Bungle, which was produced by restless jazz icon John Zorn, 1995’s Disco Volante, and 1999’s California, which the band recorded after Faith No More broke up. After a number of hiatuses and reunions, the band came full circle, returning to their death-metal roots in 2020 with The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo, recruiting Scott Ian from Anthrax on guitar and drummer Dave Lombardo from Slayer to help rerecord their first cuts from 1986.