Primus
Antipop

THE REVIEW

Not even two years to recover after the misstep of the 'Brown Album,' and Primus, led by the fantastic bassist Les Claypool, are back on track with 'Antipop'.

A title (not to mention the cover) that is already a vast program: a kamikaze sonic attack on chart pop!

Eclectic vaudeville in intellectualized crossover sauce: in Primus's music, there's a bit of everything—Sly Stone, Frank Zappa, Jaco Pastorius, Tom Waits, Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool—all mixed and shaken without mercy.
'Antipop' starts off amazingly: after a brief intro, Electric Uncle Sam begins with full force, and alongside Claypool's sublime bass is the wonderful duel between the guitars of the stylish LaLonde and the monolithic Tom Morello (RATM). Natural Joe is a great return to the classic muddy and piercing sound of their early works, while Lacquer Head dips just slightly into cold nu-metal distortions (with Fred Durst behind the mixer, it's no coincidence) and is truly one of the album's highlights.

The colossal Eclectic Electric, with its deep and disturbing pace, recalls certain '90s prog-metal solutions, not to mention the jazz and thriller delirium of Dirty Drowning Man. But the absolute masterpiece of the album is the concluding Coattails Of A Dead Man: a skewed and Central European waltz that boasts the dark vocals of Martina Topley-Bird and none other than Tom Waits himself behind that paranoid mellotron...

There couldn't have been a better conclusion to such a great return, a shame that this gem did not have a sequel due to an increasingly Zappaesque and dispersed Claypool.