Mike Patton came face to face with a drone while performing with Mr. Bungle at Knotfest Chile on December 11.
The band’s 15-song set opened with Fred Rogers’ Won't You Be My Neighbor? and songs from their 2020 album The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo. They also performed covers of Seals & Crofts’ Summer Breeze and Circle Jerks’ World Up My Ass.
But it was during their cover of Slayer’s Hell Awaits that the vocalist noticed a large drone hovering in front of his face and attempted to smash it with his microphone. Luckily for its owner, he missed and it disappeared into the sky above the outdoor venue.
The show, which took place at Estadio Monumental in Santiago, was one of the first of a handful of shows Patton had performed since February 2020.
In September 2021, he cancelled live dates with Faith No More and Mr. Bungle citing “mental health reasons” and later disclosed that he’d been diagnosed with agoraphobia.
“I was afraid of people,” he explained during an interview with Rolling Stone. “I got freaked out by being around people. And maybe that was because I spent two years basically indoors during Covid. I don’t know. Maybe it reinforced feelings that I already had.”
The band will see out the year with two more shows in South America. They play:
Dec 15: Buenos Aires Teatro Flores, ARG
Dec 18: Sao Paulo Sambodromo Do Anhembi (‘Knotfest Brasil‘)
Watch Mike's encounter with the remote controlled flying robot below.
In other news, the band recently made their Halloween 2020 show The Night They Came Home available to view for free on YouTube.
Watch the show, which was filmed at the Eureka Public Library in California, in its entirety below. Please note, no drones were harmed in the making of this live particular recording.
