TREY SPRUANCE of MR BUNGLE: A Metal Bond In Common
An interview by Bridget Herlihy.
Bungle [ buhng-guhl ] : to perform or work clumsily or inadequately; botch.
Humbolt County, California, 1985. In a region predominantly known for its lumber and fishing industries, a thrash metal band with the curious moniker of Mr Bungle was conceived. In so doing, its founding members – high school buddies Trey Spruance, Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn – spawned a musical legend whose reputation for unrelenting and raucous performances rapidly spread far and wide, earning the trio a legion of dedicated fans. By the time 2000 rolled around, the band had released three official albums on a major label – the self-titled Mr Bungle (1991), Disco Volante (1995) and California (1999) – before disappearing off the proverbial radar under a shroud of mystery. Rumours were rife that the band had broken up, yet no official statement was made to either confirm or deny a disbanding.
Fast-forward to 2020 and the stars, planets and musical desires of the three founding members of Mr Bungle aligned, and the trio reunited to re-record the band’s original demo recording ‘The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny’; a collection of pure, unadulterated thrash metal tracks initially recorded in 1986.
Performing a series of pre-pandemic live shows in early 2020 – including three sold out shows in LA – Spruance, Patton and Dunn, joined by Scott Ian (Anthrax) and Dave Lombardo (Slayer, Fantômas) – headed into the studio to resurrect the Easter Bunny – one of the band’s seminal recordings, despite the fact that it largely remained underground until now. Suffice to say there is absolutely nothing clumsy, inadequate or ‘botched’ about the long-awaited return of Mr Bungle. Rather, this new, but old offering is a testament to a band that have not only remained dedicated to their original motivations and vision, but who are at the top of their game.
Whereabouts are you located at the moment:
“I’m in Arizona, out in the desert. I just moved here out of California. The whole area that I was living in for the last twenty years was just burnt up in a big fire. But I had just sold my place before that fire, so I’m one of the lucky ones! It didn’t burn down, but the area is pretty screwed. I was fortunate, although I will say that I have spent the last three years renovating the place, so it wasn’t just a lucky thing; it was a lot of work. Arizona is great; I completely love it. I’ve been trying to get out here for a long time, so I finally did it”.
Other than renovating and moving, what have you been up to for the last couple of decades?
“I’ve been focused very strongly on…I have a band called Secret Chiefs 3, so to paint the picture for you, that band has put out seven albums in that time, and we have toured all over the world. We have played over 600 shows in 54 countries. So it’s been pretty busy, and I have been travelling all over the place. It’s quite different from my life in Mr Bungle, that’s for sure. I’ve also been composing a lot of music; I composed a string quartet for the Kronos Quartet recently, who are a really well known, avant-garde, adventurous string quartet ensemble. And I’ve done arrangements for John Zorn’s music for his other project. I’ve been all over the place doing a lot of stuff”.
Was there a particular catalyst for wanting to revisit Mr Bungle after a lengthy 20 year hiatus?
“It was an idea that Trevor [Dunn] had. Essentially I think it was because he was in a band with Dave Lombardo with Mike [Patton], and somehow it just began… we should go back and do our first demo tape that nobody really knows about. Very few people realise that we did this – that Mr Bungle started as a thrash death metal band in the mid ‘80s – and we certainly grew from there into a lot of different things. But I think between the three of us – Mike, Trevor and myself – we have this metal bond in common that is really the heart of everything for us as musicians in our collaborations. Always has been, always will be, but nobody really knew about that. So with Lombardo on the team – he was one of the primary inspire-ors of what we were doing back then – it was just an incredible idea; let’s re-present this music. If we are going to collaborate on something “new”, lets have it be something old, but it will be new to everybody else.”
It must have been a nostalgic experience revisiting this material 35 years after it was first recorded!
“It was fun because even when Mr Bungle was going, I mean sure, I played guitar, but guitar wasn’t really my priority as a musician ever, except for when I was fifteen when we made the first thrash metal demo ‘The Wrath of the Easter Bunny’. But immediately after that I started focusing more on music theory, orchestration, production, that kind of stuff. So, it’s going back to when I was fifteen years old to play guitar again [laughs], like actually being serious about playing guitar, rather than just using it as a means to an end, was pretty fun I have to say. It was hilarious, the whole process I was laughing pretty much!”
Needless to say, The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo, which drops this week, is probably a little more polished than the original recording the band made in 1986. Have those tracks evolved at all over that time? Were there any significant changes made to the tracks when you re-recorded them?
“Well, I would say that no evolution happened because we were really intentionally trying to get back into our heads as teenagers, and I was younger than Mike and Trevor by a year and a half, and we were really trying to get back into that. We made efforts to not present something that was informed or influenced by anything that any of us have done subsequently since 1985. Our point was to go back and be true to our original vision as possible. So that’s what we set out to do, and I think the only thing that ended up being actually more polished than back then was the recording.
I mean, it was a pretty tight band; we knew what we were doing back then, you know? The other difference is that you have musicians like Dave Lombardo and Scott Ian that have made a complete lifetime out of playing this kind of music, so we have that edge too, which is pretty cool. It’s a nice advantage to have.”
The finished product is fantastic, and you must be very pleased with the way that it has turned out.
“Yeah, absolutely.”
Before the pandemic took hold, Mr Bungle performed a series of live shows, including three sold out nights in LA. How did they go?
“Yeah, that went really well. I guess the test would be the first show, you know, because frankly none of us – Patton, Trevor and myself – have probably ever played a full thrash metal concert before with monitors and all that. So that was going to be the test; can we do this and be comfortable doing it? You know, we played a song here and there, and I’ve been playing lots of different kinds of thrash, and sort of death black metal in the meantime, but I’ve never stood there and played an entire concert of that music.
So that was new; it was definitely new for the three of us, and the first show went well, and I think it just got better and better for the next few shows. But the coolest thing about it was that we entered the studio immediately after that tour, so it captured the band at a very refined moment where the band chemistry is there, and everything felt tight. It was a good time to hit the record button.”
You were lucky that you managed to get the recording completed before the country went into lockdown.
“Yeah, I mean the crazy thing is that at the end of that recording, which I think was about nine or ten days, I flew to New York to produce a record for another metal band called Imperial Triumphant, they are a super great New York black metal band, so I’m just super lucky to be doing this production work for them, but that was really close to the pandemic shut down. Everybody was already being very careful about everything with the social distancing and stuff. The Mr Bungle record was a little bit further away from the shut-down and the public consciousness of the current environment, but that was very close to it.”
New Zealand has been very fortunate in comparison to a number of other countries…
“Yeah, why don’t we say the way it really is? New Zealand wasn’t lucky; New Zealand was smart. It did what everybody should have done. So we [the USA] are stupid; it’s too big and dis-unified of a country to get people to react to a crisis in a uniform way; much less in an intelligent and orderly way. The United States has a few too many opinions about ourselves that we are very stubborn about; it’s a very dysfunctional country.”
These are indeed uncertain times in the United States, and my thoughts are very much with you all at the moment.
“Yeah, thanks. I mean, I don’t know that any hat that you put on with the political institutions here is going to be anything more than a dunce cap at this point. But we’ll see what happens.”
Getting back to the band, the ‘new’ album drops this week, and you are a doing a virtual concert on Halloween; what can fans expect to see and hear?
“There’s some surprises, but, you know, if I said anything about them they wouldn’t be surprises!” [laughs]
So what does the future hold for Mr Bungle? Does the band have any plans to record another album at some point down the track, or are you just going to see how things organically progress?
“I think it’s the latter. Even this, we didn’t really make long-term plans. This…we originally conceived of it as ‘we’ll do some shows, and it will be called The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny’, which then turned into ‘nah, lets just reach into the real Mr Bungle music’, which then turned into ‘yeah, we’ll do a record’. So yeah, we don’t really plan too far in advance. We just kind of let things take their natural course.”
Obviously much of the world is locked down at the moment, and this question is very premature, but when we borders reopen do you have any plans to tour internationally with Mr Bungle?
“Yeah, we had been talking about that of course before this stuff happened. So, its certainly not like we are saying ‘no, we’re not going to do it’, but just like everybody else, when the world is able to function that way again, yeah, we will see where things are. But that was our intention from the beginning that we would do some of that.”
Mr Bungle will release their “new” album ‘The Raging Wrath Of The Easter Bunny Demo’ on October 30th via Ipecac Recordings. It will be available in New Zealand on a limited Double Translucent Ruby Red Vinyl or CD via your favourite record store, as well as digitally through all the usual streaming services.
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