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ok, here i go again...
a) mike patton is a bad rip off of yamatsuka eye. that's undebatable, i'm just stating the obvious.
b) mike patton would have stuck playing rap metal and ska if he had never met john zorn, not only does zorn give him credibility and guidance, but without naked city, painkiller, et al. there wouldn't have been a guide for most of patton's music. take fantomas, first album is a wild explosion of spazz metal with weird voices, mimicking naked city's moments with eye, second album, director's cut, are reinterpretations of movie themes, something john zorn has dedicated himself to for almost thirty years. delirium cordia is a big sprawling difficult song, in theory reflecting later naked city albums. suspended animation goes back to the nc's torture garden/boredoms formula.
mr bungle was modelled after the first naked city album in that it jumps styles at every moment, the only real innovation is that mr bungle flips genres in the same song, while nc usually went a genre a song.
patton is just a pretentious asshole that stumbled upon improv/avant garde and wild japanese music and tries too hard to stay there. he's very full of shit when he talks in interviews and his collaborations are forced at best...
...HOWEVER...
...there's a chunk of his music that doesn't suck, mainly because his main talent it's definitely not his voice (seriously, go listen to boredoms or ufo or die or any of eye's bands to see where he copies his shit. then go listen to maja raktje or ami yoshida to listen to people who really take voice as a radical instrument to a whole new level...fuck, go listen to pandit pran nath), it's finding great people to play with, his bands are fucking supergrousp. fantomas: buzz osbourne, dave lombardo (probably the best thrash drummer along with voivod's away) and trevor dunn, mr. bungle are all virtuosos except him and tomahawk are duane denison, john stainer and kevin rutmanis (one of histories most overlooked bassists); had he started bands with people that weren't such great musicians, not only technically but also raw and without bullshit, then he would have been long forgotten as the douchbag that gave the world shitty rap metal.
personally, i love disco volante, i really love mit gas (because it's more a jesus lizard album than anything) and some of fantomas stuff, mainly because instrumentally it's amazing.
he is always the weakest link in all of his bands and, frankly, the albums he has ruined by him being present in them have outnumbered the ones that are actually good.
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