Primus Primus & The Chocolate Factory With The Fungi Ensemble

Always following their own path, Primus have been making the musical world a joyously weird place since they made their debut in 1990 with Frizzle Fry. Now, over 20 years and seven albums later, Primus push themselves to new levels of strangeness with their eighth album, Primus & the Chocolate Factory with the Fungi Ensemble, an album that finds the band paying tribute to the iconic music of the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. In the hands of Les Claypool and company, the score, originally penned by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, takes on a darker, more ominous tone. This is really saying something, given that the film (like the Roald Dahl book it was adapted from) is about a bunch of wretched children meeting comically grisly ends due to their own tragic flaws, while a manic chocolatier observes with a mixture of contempt and disinterest. In a way, Primus are taking the subtext of the film in which Gene Wilder (to whom the album is dedicated) acted so brill