POP MUSIC REVIEW : Mr. Bungle and Mike Patton of Faith No More at Lingerie

Mike Patton is the singer for Faith No More, the Grammy-nominated metal-funk-art-rap band that went from the underground to the Top 10 last year. Before he joined that group, Patton was the frontman for the Eureka-based, metal-funk-art-rap band Mr. Bungle, with whom he performed Thursday to a Club Lingerie packed with record label scouts, music industry schmoozers and even the odd fan or two. The show was lots closer to a late-’70s Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo spectacle than to anything that might be termed rock ‘n’ roll .

Mr. Bungle--which included a bassist dressed as a jester, a demon-masked drummer, and two horn players, one of whom dressed as a carrot--opened with the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme, left the stage, then came back and performed it again, in Spanish. For the rest of the set, they sputtered and spurted their way through complicated rhythm and tempo changes, setting up funk grooves or metal grooves or ska grooves only to abandon them a few seconds later for a tricky break or a dissonant jam, or for a drum-fill lifted from Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison,” or for a minute or so of Bugs Bunny-type jazz. Oh yeah . . . circus music. There was a lot of circus music.

But where its stuttering fusion-tinged fiesta may have been just the ticket for people with extremely short attention spans, Mr. Bungle neither rocked as hard as its soulmates Faith No More and Primus, nor is as inventive as, say, Frank Zappa or even the chamber-rock Ordinaires. The nearly two-hour set seemed to drag on to infinity.