Mr. Bungle is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band Mr. Bungle. It was released on August 13, 1991, through Warner Bros. Records. The album contains many genre shifts which are typical of the band, and helped increase the band's popularity, gaining them a cult following. Content The album cover features artwork by Dan Sweetman, originally published in the story, "A Cotton Candy Autopsy" in the DC Comics/Piranha Press imprint title Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children. The album mixes a variety of musical styles, including ska, circus music, heavy metal, free jazz, and funk. AllMusic called it a "dizzying, disconcerting, schizophrenic tour through just about any rock style the group can think of, hopping from genre to genre without any apparent rhyme or reason, and sometimes doing so several times in the same song." The website described Mike Patton's lyrics as "even more bizarrely humorous than those he used in Faith No More", and "also less self-censored". At the time, the band's label Warner promoted the record as being Mike Patton's "seriously weird new project". The lyrics in the album are broad in themes, ranging from more comedic tones to dark and sexual references. "Slowly Growing Deaf" was "inspired by the ironic need to wear earplugs while listening to music and also people’s inability to listen", according to bassist Trevor Dunn, and also marked as the first song in the "Sleep" trilogy, with parts two and three being featured on the band’s second album. "Squeeze Me Macaroni" is a song featuring strong sexual themes being illustrated through food metaphors. "Egg" is about asociality. "Stubb (A Dub)" is about Trey Spruance's dog, Stubb. "The Girls of Porn" is about pornography and masturbation. "Love is a Fist" is about domestic violence. "Dead Goon" is about an asphixiophile, whose actions leads to the narrator’s death due to asphixiation. Quotes from David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet are strewn throughout the album. Critical reception and legacy The album received mixed reviews upon release. Entertainment Weekly gave the album a negative review, writing "Adjectives like 'puerile' and 'unlistenable' take on entirely new dimensions when applied to Mr. Bungle". Trouser Press called it "one of the most ambitiously random, fractious records in recent memory" and "one of the finest records of its kind". In 2015, Korn guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer praised the album, stating "I loved their last album, California, but their self-titled debut