Review Summary: V: Primus continue their reign over audience discomfort with a twisted, frightening spin on their iconic sound.
For Primus,
Sailing the Seas of Cheese was the net that caught the big fish. By tightening up their songwriting while still keeping their purposely wonky aesthetic alive, the SoCal trio finally had the mainstream under their spell. After a brief covers EP in
Miscellaneous Debris, it was time to see what these head-trips had up their sleeves for a follow-up.
Miscellaneous Debris was the crack in the door to the dark netherworld where Primus had gone, but with
Pork Soda, the time came to set up camp in that spectral trailer park. Dense, miasmatic, and constantly disorienting,
Pork Soda is Primus continuing their weird empire with the same devil-may-care panache they’ve displayed since the beginning, only this time, the ropes weren’t as loose. Primus wanted keep their iconic experimentation going, but they also wanted to scare us.
Pork Soda uses many of the same aesthetics as
Miscellaneous Debris. The songs are noticeably darker, much more textured, and overall, give off a much more uncomfortable vibe than those heard on
Sailing the Seas of Cheese. There are two qualities that are most responsible for this change in tone. The first is how Claypool’s vocals are presented. Instead of a sneering snarl, Claypool sticks to sliding yodels and wails. Many of the songs feature layered, echoing vocal tracks, like Claypool is performing in a dank, cavernous tomb. “Nature Boy” features Claypool pulling off a slippery impression of Rush’s Geddy Lee, while “Welcome to This World” sits bizarrely between dirty carny and half-possessed preacher. It’s unsettling to say the least, but it fits in quite well with the subject matter presented in each track.
The second major quality comes from guitarist Larry “Ler” LaLonde, whose guitar playing is miles away from the loose prog of
Sailing the Seas of Cheese. The thin, sinewy guitar solos of
Miscellaneous Debris are back in
Pork Soda, screeching and shaking across thumping drums and slick bass lines. The title track has LaLonde dancing with eerie guitar tremolos and the creepy “Bob” has both siren call chords and jagged, staggered twangs. LaLonde focuses on ambiance and texture on
Pork Soda.
Sailing the Seas of Cheese had plenty of opportunities for him to express his prog and thrash metal roots, but
Pork Soda is more fundamentalist for LaLonde. That is a rather disappointing sentiment for fans of his fluid solos, but at the same time, LaLonde’s performances sync up very well with Claypool’s haunting vocals and the tribal thumps of Tim Alexander’s drums.
The songwriting is also undeniably frightening. One of the band’s most successful tracks, “My Name is Mud”, tells a tale of a mentally unstable backwoods man who gets into an argument with a friend and bludgeons him to death, all told from the perspective of the murderer. The
Deliverance sound clip is all the more appropriate, but the song is notable for having an extremely low-tuned, but infectious bass line, one of the heaviest Claypool has ever performed. “Bob” tells the story of a man whose friend commits suicide, all with a limped, dizzying rhythm. “Mr. Krinkle” features Claypool on the upright bass and the spectral alarms of LaLonde’s guitars. All of this comes together to make a Primus album that capitalizes on insecurity. Primus never made the listener feel comfortable (they were never content with the status quo), but the subtlety of that discomfort is thrown out the window with
Pork Soda. It’s a scary album, chock full of disorienting left turns and a perpetually unsettling aesthetic.
But at the same time,
Pork Soda keeps many of the Primus trappings intact. Claypool’s bass stays true to the
Sailing the Seas of Cheese wonkiness. The third song in the Fisherman’s Chronicles, “The Ol’ Diamondback Sturgeon”, features a buttery smooth bass line from Claypool and one of the best drum performances from Tim Alexander, whose jazzy musical upbringing dances with the funky rhythms. “Hamburger Train” is a surprisingly upbeat jam, an 8-minute rocker with plenty of dark, ghostly guitars, but with a tempo that’s groovy from start to finish. “DMV”, however, doesn’t make as powerful an impression, with its almost standard structure and lack of atmosphere.
Pork Soda is such a drastic shift in style for Primus, but the trappings that Primus keep in the brew are all the right ones. You can still tell this is Primus.
Pork Soda sticks with Primus’ most iconic music-making philosophy: keeping the audience off-kilter. Despite keeping the core elements of the band together, Primus produced an album that sounds otherworldly, even for the most dedicated of Prawns. LaLonde’s screeching guitars and Claypool’s airier, more atmospheric vocals give the album its own identity, an engaging expansion beyond the tease of
Miscellaneous Debris. However, the lack of that loose fun that
Sailing the Seas of Cheese displayed is pretty disappointing. The songwriting on
Pork Soda strives for keeping listeners guessing, but at the expense of some better examples of the trio’s musicianship. Still, what Primus kept during the transition remains great. Alexander’s nimble drum rhythms and Claypool’s insatiable desire to experiment as a bassist are fine reminders that this is still Primus steering the ship.
Pork Soda isn’t what anyone expected Primus would make after the commercial success of
Sailing the Seas of Cheese, and while that might be a problem for any other musical outfit, it’s just another day for Primus, a band whose continuous lack of accommodation has only built their empire higher.
