Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / The Sound Of Wrath With TREY SPRUANCE from MR. BUNGLE

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The Sound Of Wrath With TREY SPRUANCE from MR. BUNGLE · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  I am trace Bruance. I play guitar in Mister Bungle. I guess I
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  play guitar now. I used to play lots of other things, but now
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  we're the goalposts have narrowed. I do all kinds of other music too.
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  But yeah, that's like we're talking about the Mister Bungle tour. So this
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  is this is what's happening. Guitar, guitar, guitar beautiful rather thanks for
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  johning us today. So again, thank you for johning Us. Oh of
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  course my pleasure. Right, Mister Bungle hit Astraya for running shows starting in
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  Auckland on March in third then heading to Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney in Brisbane
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  before finishing in Tirth on Marsta twelfth. Mate. So I know it's sighting
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  the obviously, but how pump is the band to becoming over this part of
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  the world. Oh it's great. I think let's see for mister Bungle,
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  this is our third time. I think it's our first time playing in New
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  Zealand though, so that that'll be new territory for us, and right before
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  that will be in Japan. But you know what Australia has always been like
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  really a stronghold for mister Bungle fandom. So this is it's really great to
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  be able to like to come back with this band. I've been back with
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  other bands since then, and I was never sure that mister Bungle would make
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  it back. So it's very cool that we're actually able to do it.
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  Oh, I'm dying for Pandy for the possibility that you could be coming into
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  a hate wife. We've got a hate wife. For about the last two
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  weeks. It's been ridiculously hot. But how had as in like forty degrees
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  in some places like sweating in the ac on even well, I'm at the
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  risk of upstaging this. I'm talking to you now from Phoenix, Arizona.
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  Any degrees is like nothing to us. We eat it for breakfast. Go
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  you the I very long long slave shirts and Jameson You'll be laughing head to
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  toe in black and you know with long sleeve shirt you're right like maybe a
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  leather jacket. Even because I suppose the popular question about it is it what
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  what can to try? And fans expect from the mister publish eyes when you
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  come over, Well, they have never heard this part of the band,
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  you know, they have through the internet, but they've never experienced this live
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  the death metal Assault. Yeah, it's a it's full on fucking speed metal,
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  really crazy, uh crazy fast show. It's nothing like we did before.
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  I mean, you know, if they're expecting a whole bunch of genre
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  shifting, I would say that's not gonna happen. But we do actually play
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  a bunch of cover songs, so it's it's it's a little You're not gonna
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  go see a death metal band and see what mister Bungle does with the death
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  metal experience, that's for sure. I hope the frink sawed out my life.
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  What do you guys expect from the Crowns like? Is do you sort
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  of Nias Maso? Do you that wrapped off of what you're doing on stage?
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  He does something was down on in front of you. That's a good
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  question. I'm usually very wrapped up in what I'm doing, but since now
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  I'm sort of just playing guitar, you would think that it would be I
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  would be paying more attention to what's going on out there, but actually I'm
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  playing like eighty billion notes, so I'm still stuck paying attention to what I'm
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  doing, and it doesn't matter In mister Bungle because everybody's looking at Mike Patton
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  anyway, and now that there's Scott Ian and Dave Lobardo, like I'm way
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  down the total pole, like nobody cares. It's good works for me?
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  Are you sort of touched on his briefway life? But I only got to
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  do it a bit more desa, Like, what is my difference in mister
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  Bungles shows a new music he saw Miranda when you hate ust On Just the
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  repertoire, just the music that we're playing is we're going back to our music
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  that we wrote, Like I was fifteen years old when we wrote the music
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  from our Raging Mouth of the Easter Bunny demo fourteen and fifteen years old,
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  So that's the music that we're going to be playing, is like, you
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  know, stuff that I was playing when I was learning how to be a
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  guitar shredder, something I gave up on immediately after making that demo. It's
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  weird, you know, it's a strange territory for for I think, for
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  all of us to revisit, but at the same time, it's it's absolutely
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  imprinted in our soul as a band. So it's also kind of like second
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  nature like breathing to us. It's like what bands when they would go back
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  and play the twelve bar blues or something. That's what we're doing where this
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  is. This is our version of going back and playing the twelve bar blues.
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  Fucking you mentioned that album, The Riseing Grated the East the Bunnyl,
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  Like what this kind of through your mind when you name that night Long we
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  try to name it something that no one could fucking site, or we trying
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  to name it something that's sanded cod because it's damn near impossible. Yeah.
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  Well, if I remember this right, it's a it's a quote from a
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  lyric from a if you can believe this, there were mister Bungles side bands
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  even in nineteen eighty five and eighty six, and there was as there was
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  a Mister Buckle side band that had a lyric that actually screened that very phrase
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  out the Raging Breath of the Easter Buddy, and the lyrics were all this
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  complicated metaphor about fertility and procreation. It's very stupid, like angsty teenage boy
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  stuff. Thanks for clearing that. I'll still can't say it, but I
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  know what it's that man, Yeah, you know what you're the first one
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  to get that scoop acting. Nobody ever asked what it means. Oh wow,
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  they're awesome stuff, awesome, you're gotta be bringing the Melbourn's radio.
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  But for the runs, we don't know what a great band ny albat What
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  chose them to come on the Woltro video. We wanted to make sure that
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  our revisiting Australia was something special and grandiose, I guess, and you know,
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  I don't think we have anything better to offer than the Melvins. Quite
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  frankly, who would. It's unbelievable, And we go so far back with
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  them that, you know, traversing internationally with him, which is something we've
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  never done. This will be our first time playing internationally with them. Okay,
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  just seems right. You know, it's like the most the best bang
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  for the buck that I think that we can offer. Now, I'm going
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  to go back in history videomot because to be honest with you, it's not
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  every day we get a chance to chat with the band like you guys that
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  have been so massive for the world music scene. So back to the start,
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  made like yourself. Trevor Dunn and Mike Patten form with the Bungle while
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  still in high school back in nineteen eighty five. So what was the musical
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  climate like back then that gave birth to the band, and what were your
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  initial goals or what did you want to achieve? You said nineteen eighty five,
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  right, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, it's correct. Yeah,
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  it's right, it's right. Goals. Let's see, Well, yeah,
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  nineteen eighty five, fourteen years old, I would say we were You
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  have to understand a little bit about where we came from. We come from
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  a very remote logging town. I know, when you say California, it
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  sounds it conjures up an image of something, and I assure you that's not
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  the image of where we came from. It's more like the Pacific Northwest.
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  It's equally distant from Portland and San Francisco, with essentially nothing in between.
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  So we're talking, you know, five hundred miles or five hundred kilometers each
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  direction, with very little culturally happening. So the sense of isolation and the
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  sense of no future darkness. Let's see, maybe nuclear war was impending.
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  Lots of people beating us up at school for not being like the rest of
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  everyone else. We I guess we had a lot to say, and we
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  didn't say it in a particularly politicized or punk way. We said it in
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  a more maybe guttural and offensive way. And it's fair sy that your stall
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  any in particular your liberty with blending genres was unique at the time. So
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  where did that actually come from? What were you trying to go against everything
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  in music or creating something maybe a first in a way, the metal is
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  pretty anti, but you know, we're also we're very inquisitive lads. So
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  as we started growing up as musicians, we just in a way, this
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  goes back to what I just told you, it's like breathing through a straw.
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  You're taking in the entire outside world and mainlining it like it's a drug.
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  For us, it was like record store and library. You know,
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  we're just going into the record store, going into the library and immersing ourselves
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  in anything that was happening, everything and anything. So we just really mainlined
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  a lot of music from all around the world and from every era that we
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  could could get our hands on and studying it and kind of reprocessing it.
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  And we were also lucky, I will say, the band Fishbone came through
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  our town and that you know, that's like right in the middle of our
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  metal metal head phase and it really helped us see that. You know,
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  for live bands you can do a lot more, you can you can have
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  a lot more nuance to what you're saying that just you know, the headbang
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  shredding, even though the shredding like you know, not to knock that stuff
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  because it's still evolving, Like the metal world is still totally incredible. It's
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  still like evolving and becoming more interesting over time. But I guess for us,
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  we just needed more right then, right right now. Yeah, so
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  we just started going for it. You know, I've wrote the Pleasure to
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  speaking with Trevor before and he's an amazing and brilliant musical mind. And Mike
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  Patten speaks for himself, mate, So run us through the creative process for
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  Into three. If you get together, like is it butt heads? Does
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  it all come again? And nicely? He is got to sit in corners
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  and do you think, like what's the creative process? Like I would say,
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  I mean we should talk about that. It's changed over the three different
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  eras of the band, and it was definitely collect aborative like a gang in
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  the eighties, you know, it was us against the world. In the
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  nineties, it kind of turned the opposite. Pat would be on tour,
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  Trevor's in the jazz scene, and I'm in this kind of post punk already
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  underground scene in San Francisco, so we would be completely separate, and then
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  we would all reconvene and bring our ideas that we've been working on for the
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  band, you know, and always be pleasantly surprised that they all were very
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  well synchronized. So putting that together was always I mean, I'm sorry.
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  We never had arguments. The creative vision was always unified. It's unbelievable.
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  Mister Bumble has a chemistry where it's like it's not that there's smooth sailing interpersonally
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  on every level, but creatively speaking, there's the wheels are greased. We
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  have no we never had any issues on what, you know, what this
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  song should sound like, should this part go here? Like we're completely unified
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  on that stuff. I don't know how that's the way it is that after
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  a few DeVos, the band released the debut self titled album in nineteen ninety
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  one, Mate, So how was it received at the time, Like we've
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  trying to create something that people liked. Are we trying to create something that
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  you like? Yeah, we were really We had four demos under our belt,
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  and we we were really just we were torn between trying to represent everything
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  that we had been up until that moment, which we were totally bored with,
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  and embracing the new moment in the new music that we had going.
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  So that record kind of I guess it's our coming of age. We were
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  literally like twenty one years old, twenty twenty one years old, and we
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  just wanted to arrive with a record. We weren't really thinking about what the
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  audience reception was going to be. That came a little later, and then
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  we became Yeah, that's when the interaction I would say, maybe we became
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  reactionary, do what the audience expectation was, but not in making the record.
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  We weren't thinking about the audience at all. Meet the record. And
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  then you released two more albums, disco Valante in not in ninety Fibe in
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  California in ninety nine before going on a twenty year break from the year two
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  thousands. So at that stage, were you can chat with what mister Bungle
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  had achieved as a band. Yeah, in retrospect, I would say yes,
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  I do think that because of the ambitiousness of disco Valante and the sort
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  of the pulling off some complicated things that probably should not have ever happened on
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  a major label. That was nice to be able to have done that,
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  and you can look back on that and feel good about it. And then
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  California Record was absolutely more ambitious on a production level, and looking back on
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  that one, yeah, it's fulfilled. I think it fulfilled a lot of
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  potentials of that band that had been dormant or we had only been fantasizing about.
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  And it felt like we pulled it off. If you asked, like,
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  where would it have gone from there? I'm not real sure to be
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  honest, Like we had ideas that we were tossing around, but none of
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  it was fully formed. And it's actually arguably probably best that it ended when
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  it did, or you know, w'ved on its long break when it did,
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  because I don't know, maybe the rest of the little threads out there
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  that we would have followed would not have been as felt well for him.
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  Like I think it was our destiny to make disco Valante in California, I
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  don't know how much destiny we had passed that at that time. Interesting when
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  you came back twenty years later you brought Scott inn in on guitar and Dave
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  bron Bardo and Bramins, who were both legends in their own right, But
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  why were they the right fit from mister bungle moving forward that stage? Oh,
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  it's unbelievable because you know, we were listening, of course to Slayer
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  and Anthrax when we made our first first demo in eighty five. We were
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  sort of contemporaries, but you know, totally isolated and a bit younger,
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  so we're heavily you know, we were heavily influenced by both of those guys
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  that if you picked the two most influential people on us, arguably it would
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  be those two. And you know, Patton and Trevor had been working with
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  Deve Lombardo and Mike knew Scott Ian personally, so and the idea was,
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  you know, let's recreate this this thrash metal era because people don't know about
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  it. What would be the best way to do that? I mean,
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  the best way to do that would be to get Dave Lombardo and Scott i
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  in. So, you know, a long shot, but not really.
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  They were, they were excited to do it, and it's just like unbelievable,
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  like a dream come true for us. And I think I feel like
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  they dug in super hard, like both of those guys did their homework and
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  like really seriously brought it. Like those guys are not slouches in any way,
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  Hey man, they really brought it shut. And then then of course
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  you re recorded and re released your First Time I, which was the rating
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  brat of that Easter Buddy that year. Is why did you choose to re
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  record an existing piece of work rather than write new songs with a new line
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  up? Oh, because we didn't have an ambition to reconvene as a band.
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  Actually, this this idea which happened spontaneously when my band Secret Chiefs was
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  opening up for Mike Patton's band Dead Cross, which has Dave Lombardo in it,
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  and we were in Brooklyn and Trevor our Basis was there who you talked
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  to, and he floated the idea like this might be insane, but what
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  if we got back together and we played that stuff with this guy with Dave
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  Lombardo. You know, that was really the genesis of it. It was
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  kind of a you know, a snark the way the whole thing, the
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  whole the way, the whole band has been a kind of a snark to
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  begin with, and we just laughed about it. But you know we could
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  get away with doing that. Yeah, it kind of took root. It
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  took a while. It was actually Dave Obarti who he called me up I
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  don't know, months later and was like, Hey, remember that idea,
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  why don't we why don't we make a demo? Like you and me will
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  make a demo and surprise what you and Trevor for their birthday. You know
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  that we've actually been working on this stuff. So we did it, and
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  we worked up a little demo for it, and you know the rest is
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  history. Wow, And has that been talk of actually creating any new music
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  or he's just been genos with the else so well, one of the cool
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  things about these tours is that every time we go out, we're taking on
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  new sort of cover songs that are anything but death metal. So it's actually
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  I was mentioning the narrowed gold posts of this incarnation of the band, but
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  actually they're slowly widening back up again because of this whole huge repertoire of cover
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  songs that we're doing. We're just sort of scoring like what we can get
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  away with with the instrumentation that we have, which is just all guitars,
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  you know, and it's going better and better, Like it's actually pretty pretty
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  fun. It's become a very interesting part of the show is that the curated
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  covers. Patton is very good at selecting, you know, these kind of
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  you know, things that you wouldn't expect. I mean, I know the
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  guy very well, and he still comes up with these ideas. I'm like,
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  what the hell? And but then and you don't think about it translating.
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  Let's put it this way. You know, it translates so well to
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  the live performance, and it's all counterintuitive stuff that I would never think,
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  oh, that's going to be great when we play that in front of you
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  know, four thousand people, but I'd be kind of afraid, like this
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  is gonna suck. But it's always good. He has he has a killer
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  instinct for curating those those covers. I'll tell you one person, I like
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  the interview one day. It seems like you'd be a fascinating person. Yeah,
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  I mean, you know he were You've talked to travel and me.
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  We're all pretty similar, but he has Yeah, he has a special perspective.
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  So when all said it done right, when you look at it from
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  a personal point of view, what do you say is mister Bungle's contribution to
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  the music saying in general mainly a lot of confusion, maybe a lot of
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  bad. Like you know, we we came at the moment of new metal
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  and it did influence a bunch of those new new metal bands. And not
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  to talk too much smack about all of that, but like, I'm glad
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  that now, you know, later there are things that are emerging that that
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  claim mister Bungle influence that I'm pretty thrilled about, you know, like good
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  good stuff like that. There's the band Igor, and there's like a friend
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  Rava Shancone, a composer who's like you know, who was big into mister
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  Bungle, has his own story about that. These things make me feel great.
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  So I feel like some of the impact that we've had has been very
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  very positive and targeted right, like on the right people. Some of it
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  seems to have landed in weird places that I have nothing to do with,
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  you know, So I always had mixed feelings about that, you know,
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  but uh, you know things are working out fine now, you know,
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  all right, trial, Thanks very much for you Tom that I R.
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  It's been absolute pleasure to speaking. Really, mister Bungle. Start the tour
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  in Auckland on March a third before heading out to Australia. So I'll be
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  at the Brisbane ship runas. I'll be fascinted. Give me a wife.
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  Excellent Brisbane. It'll be great to be back there.