Welcome To The Bungle

Founding Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance — and delighted newcomer Scott Ian — reminisce, re-evaluate & reignite the raging wrath

- By Gregory Adams

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE “THANKS” LIST on Mr. Bungle’s first demo tape, The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny, the Humboldt County, California, teenagers offer their fans, herein described as “demented geeks & skankers,” an all-caps message outlining their mission statement: “AIM TO CONFUSE!” This was all the way back 1986, and damned if they aren’t sticking to their word close to 35 years later.

When the group first announced they were getting back together in 2019, following a nearly 20-year hiatus, a much larger faction of loyalists was likely salivating at what kind of bizarre musical experiments the famously genre-splicing act would be getting up to next. Across three surprisingly major label-released albums, Mr. Bungle cross-pollinated violently shredded death metal with cocktail jazz, ska, doo-wop, exotica, surf, klezmer, funk and every other genre tag under the sun, often within the same number.

More than a few eyebrows must have been raised, then, when it was revealed that founding guitarist Trey Spruance, bassist Trevor Dunn and frontman Mike Patton were getting the band back together to re-record the brutal yet comparatively straight-forward thrash sounds of that first cassette, naming the update The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo. Add to that, the trio beefed up their current roster with two especially high-profile first-wave thrash figures — former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and Anthrax rhythm guitarist Scott Ian. In some ways, it’s made for Mr. Bungle’s weirdest gambit yet.