Buy Me for My Cool Name

Imagine a busy street corner in downtown Oakland. Some bandana-wearing homes are chilling by a bench. A televangelist pleads for money from behind the window of a hardware store. A Red Hot Chili Peppers album is blaring out of a six foot boom box, and the merciless Californian sun is beating down upon the whole scene like a catalyst for a violent reaction.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning from the musical heavens cuts through the sweltering heat and submerges the street in a blinding light. The intense energy genetically recombines all it touches, and when the dust has cleared, five young musicians who look like extras from Colors stand defiantly in a row. Thus was born Fungo Mungo.

The music they produce is strictly funk. The image they project is California punk. But the quality of the product is anything but junk.

On Humungous, Fungo Mungo plays a vicious, pernicious, delicious brand of funk filled with grooves designed to move your behind and sociallyconscious lyrics to tax your mind.

Whether you're listening to the televangelistbashing "Do You Believe in God?" the media-bashing "Sex Sells," or the music industry-bashing "Sold Your Soul (for Rock and Roll)," you'll quickly get the feeling that this indignant band has a lot of bashing to do. Luckily, they do their best bashing on their instruments, providing rock-solid beats and virtuoso basslines beneath a swarm of tasteful synth vamps, groovalistic rhythm guitars, and athletic vocals.

The only sour ingredient in this recipe are the lyrics, which become annoyingly self-righteous and downright repetitive at times. Happily, this problem is counterbalanced by the band's streetwise sense of humor.

This emerges in both the self-parodying chorus of "STFU" ("shut the fuck up"), and the intentionally comical use of the familiar rap exclamation "word!" in the consistently amusing "Sold Your Soul (for Rock and Roll)."

From the opening moments of the album, which consist of a radio flipping through several Spanish stations, to its last tracks, the frenetic in strumental "Spontaneous Solo," Fungo Mungo has a clear vision of what they want to say and how they want to say it.

I could easily see this album playing at a dance party, on a car radio, or in the CD player of your average funk/metal fan. Fungo Mungo is a talented young act, and is definitely worth checking out.