I like to imagine Mike Patton's mind in similar terms as rural America; it's a nice place to visit, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there. A world where maniacal hitchhikers wait for unsuspecting Samaritans at the edge of town and midgets and harelips cavort in saturnalian bliss on empty carnival grounds might offer a fair amount of solace to extreme cases of psychological disability, but for a normal guy like me it's a tourist destination and nothing more.
Patton, on the other hand, seems perfectly at ease with his permanent residency in the macabre corners of the psyche. After almost single-handedly inventing rap-metal (or at least stealing the patent from Chuck Mosely) with Faith No More, he spent most of the next decade-plus growling, shrieking and spitting his way from a blip on the pop culture radar screen to certifiable obscurity, thanks to his work with Fantômas and a pair of solo records on fellow nutjob John Zorn's Tzadik imprint. But somewhere between starting his own record label to prove that there are other weirdos out there making music as thoroughly twisted as his, and crooning his way to soft-porn nirvana with Dan the Automator on Lovage, Patton answered a call from ex-Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison-- turns out Denison has an unquenchable fetish for writing music for oddball singers, and Patton was just the scratch to relieve his itch.
With fellow musclemen John Stanier (late of Helmet) and Kevin Rutmanis (ex-Cows, The Melvins) fleshing out the DNA strain for this new monster, they christened it Tomahawk and started scalping motherfuckers from the get-go. Not only was their 2001 self-titled debut easily Patton's best work since his Faith No More/Mr. Bungle heyday, but the band also managed to land an opening slot with wannabe-freaks Tool (presumably to lend the headliners some cred on the mentally impaired circuit)-- giving weight to the long-debated theory that routinely being booed off the stage by 15,000 black-clad teenagers only solidifies your resolve as a working musical unit.
Although I'm not usually susceptible to press release anti-hyperbole like "Mit Gas finds Tomahawk more comfortable working together as a proper group," I'll be damned if there isn't something to that little bit of PR wisdom that accompanies Tomahawk's second full-length. For one, Patton's keyboards play an inextricable role within the band this time out, allowing the group to straddle the distance between ambience and onslaught even more remarkably than on its first record. This is especially evident on instrumental segues like the untitled section between "You Can't Win" and "Mayday" and the self-contained "Harlem Clowns", both of which suggest that the band could improvise an entire set off of something similar and it would be virtually mindblowing. Adding to Tomahawk's musical evolution is the fact that Denison's guitar lines are significantly less riff-oriented than before; sure, he's still just as likely to throw down some Zeppelin-worthy flatted-fifth power chords, but he spends more of his time clearing the room for Patton to throw his voice around like an abusive stepfather.
Song-wise, there are some real killers on Mit Gas-- cuts that reference the intensity of the self-titled record but still manage to take it to a higher level. "Rape This Day" and "Mayday" both have Herculean punk-rock choruses that pimp-slap any and all competition into a fetal position, while "You Can't Win" uses a cheap drum machine to approximate the sound of horseflies buzzing around a rotting foxtrot corpse. "Capt. Midnight" is equally abrasive-yet-melodic, as it builds the band's newfound mastery of dynamic tension into an epic meditation on something to do with "don't be afraid" and "stinking lies." In fact, the only track that's downright displaced is the Spanish-language "love song" "Desastre Natural"-- while the realization that Patton can now inflict his disturbed will upon millions more in foreign lands is frightening, the song as a whole is about as entertaining as Enrique Iglesias on crystal meth.
Now, I could try to pass off my own PR jive like "Mit Gas isn't for the faint of heart" or some other bullshit cliché like that, but I'd just be rehashing what was already obvious as soon as I mentioned Patton's name in the first sentence (not to mention that I'd also be writing like a goddamn chump). But anyone who gets off on a good old-fashioned visit to the dark side like I do (to reiterate, keyword = "visit") should turn the volume up, sit back, and picture Patton growing fins and a Hitler mustache while taking this Teutonic geek show on the road.
