*** Mr. Bungle

CALIFORNIA

(Warner Bros.)

It wasn't until Mike Patton's success as Faith No More's vocalist got his other band a Warner Bros. contract that the world learned just how weird a guy he is. Mr. Bungle -- that other band -- are half Frank Zappa genius and half Weird Al goofiness. Their first two releases were difficult, puzzlingly appealing romps that blended death metal, lounge, free jazz, polka, funk, and a host of other styles.

California sticks to a Beefheartian approach to music, but there are also a few straight-ahead ballads here. The opening "Sweet Charity" finds Patton laying a sugary Beach Boys melody over Hawaiian slide guitar; "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" lifts its harmonies straight from "Good Vibrations" before laying on the power chords. Elsewhere, Bungle's trademark insanity rears its intriguing head as "Ars Moriendi" segues from polka to crunchy metal to something that sounds like "Hava Negila" and back again. And the transition in "Goodbye Sober Day" from perky xylophone carnival music to a teeth-gnashing death-metal chant of "chukka chukka chukka" is the kind of pastiche that might put a smile on the face of even an arch avant-gardist like John Zorn.

-- Mike Bruno