Review Summary: The sonic equivalent to having your ass eaten and ravaged by an angry raccoon that hasn’t eaten in a few days. But in a good way though...I suppose...maybe?
If you don’t already like Mike Patton, or don’t even know him, just don’t listen to this. Go listen to Faith No More or the EP he did with The Dillinger Escape Plan. That’s much more of a worthy introduction than
Adult Themes for Voices. For those of you that are unfamiliar, this is Mike Patton’s solo debut record, where he uses his voice in a capella form to perform many horrific and experimental noise pieces over the course of the record. The record, like most experimental pieces, works way better as one whole album experience rather than individual tracks, but not because of the style, but because Mike Patton is a dumbass and made it 37 tracks over 45 minutes to *** with us or something i guess. There’s some definite traits to be had though, even though if a lot of it is grade-a Patton dumbassery.
A lot of the production is very akin to most harsh noise artists, especially some of the older Merzbow workings (even though most harsh noise fans will probably crucify me for saying that) and this creates a strong sense of atmosphere with an odd sense of humor and mystical throat-clusterfúckery. There are a lot of off-kilter comedic moments, as it is a Patton record), in this record, especially in the first half . These display some of his rapid voice workings over what seems to be whoever produced this’ suicide note or something. But where things get odd is near the second half of the record, and even more so near the very end. Everything starts to turn more atmospheric and you don’t really realize it until you think your speaker turned off, which is followed by Mike’s shrill howls and terrorizing screams that will haunt you with schizophrenic tendencies that lean into the background. These sound like nothing else I’ve ever heard before and that’s definitely not a bad thing. Then, in traditional Patton fashion, he starts screaming “fúck” really loud like a total moron and it gets even more brain dead than it already was, at least for the most part, until a few minutes from the end. He goes up and down with these moods throughout the record almost
too many times and that’s what kind of ruins the record in some aspects.
There isn’t really much going for this record though if you’re not into a fully grown man screaming at you over layers and layers of sonic ear-fondling and odd production choices, like using literally no instrumentation whatsoever, barring a few drum portions here and there. The entire record is mostly Mike Patton’s odd and estranged voice distorted, chopped, and layered to the poorest lofi quality screaming, which is pretty much whatever comes to his sanity-deprived mind. And, while this would be okay normally, I wish he would separate the two main sounds, which are the atmospheric sounds and haunting, mentally damaged pieces that literally made me physically jump at points. The majority of the disturbed parts sound like he’s just mumbling, almost like someone who just got hit in the head with a spiked baseball bat and is struggling to come together with something to say. The main issue with this record is the potential atmosphere, consisting of these haunting and schizophrenic moments that sound like the musical equivalent of the movie
Clean, Shaven, that winds up being ruined by Patton’s attempts at off-kilter comedy that probably were only really funny to him at the time.
