It's the day after Halloween and Mike Patton is joking about the previous night's Mr. Bungle gig.

"Michigan was good," Bungle leader, Patton, says, propped on a sofa arm in a spare room at the Warehouse in Toronto. "We were the Chili Peppers for Halloween. Happy harroween!"

Huh?

"Geddit?" He asks, knowing your hapless journalist doesn't get the joke. He explains by way of gesticulation, motioning like he's shooting up. "We did the harroween," he laughs naughtily. "Geddit?"

Patton is not above sticking it to a band he once considered contemporaries way back when his old band, Faith No More, was a more viable side project to Mr. Bungle, thanks to the monster hit "Epic." Since then, the Chili Peppers have taken the easy street to commercial pop while Mr. Bungle has resumed full-time status with the demise of Faith No More.

Mr. Bungle's third album, California (Warner), continues the band's resolute goal to shun the bland mainstream - something they've been doing for some 15 years. Musical cannibals, sons of Frank Zappa and the legendary Os Mutantes, Mr. Bungle treat the world of music like an All-U-Can-Eat aural buffet from which any musical form is free to be thrown upon the plate, regardless of its origin. In the space of 30 seconds, they jump from dope-ass, motherfuckin' funk, to whoop-whoop slapstick, to Beavis and Butthead-worthy metal, over to un chanson d'un autre langue, and back to the top of the verse, but not before indulging in some Balinese monkey chants, of course. The juxtapositions are so radically jarring they must be heard to be believed. And while it's often humourous, just don't call it ironic.

"I think that if that happens, it usually happens by accident and the more you force something like that, the more artificial it comes off," Patton stresses.

Still, it's hard to hear the kind of emotional commitment you'll find on, let's say, a Sarah McLachlan record.

"Well..." Patton pauses before getting fired up. "Says who? I think she's a fucking lying bitch. Whadda'ya think of that?

"At a certain point," Patton says, "after you spend so much time playing with a band and putting your life into the record, making sacrifices, blah, blah, blah, you think to yourself, 'Wait a minute, this is my life.' And if all of this is about pulling off some elaborate joke, then the laugh is on me. So what's the fuckin' point?

"Sure there's places in there where we're poking fun and were poking people in the eye a little, and that's great, but that's not the emphasis of this band."

Besides the dizzying genre-shifts that are so salient to Mr. Bungle, there's the baffling vocals of Patton who, by turns, wails like an Eastern-European gypsy, croons, screeches and gurgles. Extracurricular collaborations with such avant-luminaries as Bill Laswell, John Zorn (who produced the first Bungle disc), the Kronos Quartet, Naked City and, at different times, with DNA alumni Ikue More and Arto Lindsay have definitely helped him develop his own unorthodox style. (For the truly initiated, check out two of his mind-fuck, solo vocal discs, released on Zorn's Tzadik label.)

He's also been running a label, Ipecac, for a year now, releasing, amongst other things, his own side-work.

"First it was my band, Fantomas," which, besides Patton, includes members of the Melvins and Slayer. "And we've done two Melvins records. And we do a project with me and [obscenely prolific Japanese noise-merchant] Merzbow."

Crazy thing is, though California is Mr. Bungle's poppiest record, no radio programmer will touch it because it's not done by Beck. So unless they get Ol' Dirty Bastard to do a guest rap or Howie B to add some techno-cred to the mix, chances are Joe Public won't be hearing much of Mr. Bungle.

"We're not on the radio, we're not on MTV," Patton says amused.

"Anything besides that these days seems to be CULT! Which automatically makes it like a B-movie. It's so sleazy — a cult band! It's like, whenever I hear that, I think of, y'know, Ed Wood or something."

But if "cult" status means making one of the most interesting records of the year, so be it. After all, California makes Californication sound like Phil Collins. So, come the revolution, Patton knows who must be shot for musical treason.

"I'd have to say the Chili Peppers," Patton laughs. "I'd cheer for [them to be] first in line. Not only for the music, but mostly for the music."

Even though you used to be a fan of their music?

"Sure, sure. Absolutely. I'd put Metallica second in line," Patton says, relishing the idea. "Maybe first, actually. They're both bands that had sparks, then lost them. Pathetically. And pretended like they didn't."