The Venom Tooth of Tomahawk
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By Wesley Joost Mike Patton is a peevish hellhound obstinately dedicated to redeeming heavy metal, but he's also human, and he cries too. After spending years dedicating himself to the sonically subversive and unpalatable Patton has returned to his heavy metal roots with Tomahawk, a band Faith No More might have become if they had hired Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison after booting Jim Martin in 1994. Not that Patton, who grew up on a provincial diet of speed-core metal has ever lost touch with his inner heaviness. It's just that his love affair with the irritating, the strange, the ironic, has taken him into sonic realms that many metal-heads would think were, in the words of South Park's Kyle Brovloski, "Liberace gay." On Dec. 4 and 5 at Slim's Patton cupped the many innovations he has made in his solo career and funneled them into Tomahawk. He made the band's sonic walls jiggle like malformed jello as he manipulated the music levels with his keyboard controlled sound effects and sampling equipment. Using three mics and a CB radio to filter his many voices, he belted out stern alarums, crooned as lasciviously as a lute, whispered like a bubbling bongload, and carried anthemic tunes that would crack the voice of Pavarotti.
Patton's greased back hair was held firmly to his head by a dishwasher-style hairnet, depriving the audience of any exotic hair-flips. He wore a gas mask during one song, although it was unclear if this was a topical reference or just for vocal effect. Toward the showÕs conclusion he began assuming the character of a crook-back cranky camp golem. He capered nimbly across the stage with his wrist flapping whimsically, his face cock-eyed like Fearless Leader from Rocky and Bullwinkle as he deep-throated the mic. He snarled lyrics like "the cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river," before coddling the audience with a politicians' tact: "You tree huggin' sons of a bitches!" The audience fidgeted a bit during the bandÕs improvisational break in-between songs, which were mostly for the band's own amusement. Duane Denison, who consented to an interview before the first show, explained how the band balanced their dynamics between playing improvisational pieces and songs from their album. "At the end of songs, or what becomes the beginning of a song, like between the third and fourth songs, we'll improvise," explained Denison. "No one directs it or points. We just want to keep it to 5 or 10 minutes, and see when the energy has peaked and when its time to pull out. We give people the option when they feel its right, like if the songs starts with just drums, that they can just start it." Denison says he had played some Jesus Lizard songs around 2000 times including rehearsals, because he felt he had an obligation to the paying audience to play from his body of work. But with Tomahawk he wants to leave something for the band. Patton has long held the tradition of making a jest of earnest ballads and Tomahawk's power ballad rendition of Angel Eyes, was no exception. In fact, looking back on his body of work there doesn't seem to be a single song where he bears his soul. "It is entertainment, you know. But I'm not always sarcastic. I'm human too. I cry," Patton wrote in an email interview. Denison, however, is the ax-grinder behind Tomahawk. A common friend introduced Denison to Patton after a 1999 Mr. Bungle show in Nashville, Tennessee where Denison was recording with Hank Williams Jr. III. Patton told Denison about his new label Ipecac and encouraged him to contribute. "So I said I'd be interested in doing a rock thing and if you're interested in collaborating with me on it then why don't you think about it? We sent tapes and CDs in the mail -- he came down to Nashville for a couple of days and he worked on stuff at my house. Then one by one everyone we got to be in the group came to Nashville (including Helmet's drummer John Stanier and Melvins bassist Kevin Rutmanis). Then we recorded the album in May and June, had a week of rehearsals -- recorded and mixed the album in two and a half weeks," Denison said. "I pretty much wrote all the basic structures of the songs for this album I got together with Mike and he wrote vocal melodies, lyrics, electronics," Denison added. "Then we got together and worked on the arrangements. I would make demos and make suggestive parts, drum machines, bass overdubs. But people filled in their own things. I didn't control everyone." "I added a little to the structure and some background stuff and lyrics, but it is really Duane's baby," wrote Patton. "The riffs and guitar stuff is not that different," continued Denison, "but I was texturally doing a few new things that I didn't do with Jesus Lizard. With Mike's voice he can scream and chatter as well as actually sing melodies consistently which David, (Wm. Sims of Jesus Lizard) bless his heart, wasn't so good at. "This is a lot more stripped down and straight-forward then a lot of the stuff Mike has done. It's a lot more accessible than Fantomas and Bungle," said Denison. In other words Patton is stretching the ears and patience of his fans slightly less this time around. "I've never strived to be a crowd pleaser," said Patton, "although it is nice when others enjoy the music. And likewise I have never strived to agitate although I like to challenge the audience." Like he challenged the audience with his brainchild Fantomas, a band that obsessively compulsively deconstructs speed metal and makes a distilled argument for the genre's continued existence. What's most noticeable about Fantomas live, and this wasn't evident with Tomahawk, is the chemistry, almost a love affair, between ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and Patton. These two titans of metal are too big for the small confines of a club and their super-exact super-loud performance could be felt in the nosebleed section of Madison Square Garden. "I would not say that Dave and I define Fantomas. It is just that the dynamics between us is very noticeable live. There have been quite a few bands where the drummer drove the music. Zeppelin, Rush, Savage Garden, etc.," said Patton. "It worked surprisingly well in the stadium and festival setting, but I prefer a great sounding club like Slim's." Now with Fantomas, Tomahawk, and ever-changing Mr. Bungle, Patton is back to being the charismatic frontman he was known for being in Faith No More. In 1996 he released, Adult Themes for Voice, an a cappella album of music written for voice and microphone, where he exercised every ugly fascinating sound in his body into his TASCAM 4-track Portastudio and unleashed it onto the public. While this album may become a classic in league with the Shagg's Philosophy of the World, it seemed that Patton's music now had so much integrity he would never be listenable again. It didn't help when he toured with saxophonist and alternative composer John Zorn to do point-and-wail improvising (with a technique called Cobra that Zorn created). During these live shows Patton would hide behind his amp and make no effort to entertain whatsoever. Then he started making non-singing appearances on lots of one-shot avant-garde recordings. Mr. Bungle's excellent 1995 album "Disco Volante" dropped the funk/metal of their roots altogether to show that they too were a band schooled in composition. During this time, the casual fans dropped out and the hardcore fans loved Patton even more. Now that Tomahawk has been on tour for a while the next album is going to "sound like a band that has played together," says Denison.
Denison also likes working with Ipecac records. "I like being able to make decisions about everything, like how much do I want to spend on artwork? How much merchandise should we get?" Being separate from the lucrative Faith No More and Slash-Reprise Records hasn't hampered Patton's style at all. "I'm making more now than ever. I actually see the money now. It is not sucked up by a huge label and staff of handlers." He also has enough disposable income to keep up with his videogame hobby: ÒI got Playstation 2. My manager has the Xbox. Not enough great games out for it yet, but it might takeover in a year or two. PS2 is great! Have you played Grand Theft Auto 3?" Now that the avant-garde Patton and the rock star Patton have become comfortable with each other his best work is finely coming out. Whether genre jumping with Mr. Bungle, making sound experiments with John Zorn, or playing eccentric metal with Tomahawk Patton feels his many musical directions have always been consistent. "I'm always REALLY rocking so don't come a knocking."
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This is the glorious torment of the Patton Formula: an atmosphere of dreary brooding followed by a pterodactyl scream attack. He stations himself behind his keyboard, then lurches in reverse, tilts his head back with mic and both fists pressed to his face, and whips his body forward and downward while rooting like a bloody boar.