One album brought in Tom Waits, James Hetfield, and the frontman of Limp Bizkit. The same record pushed Primus, the California trio known for warped bass-driven rock, into a three-year silence. Antipop, their sixth studio album, arrived on October 19, 1999, and nearly became the band's last word. The record appeared on Prawn Song Records and Interscope Records. It was the last Primus album before a break that lasted from 2000 to 2003. The sessions took place at Rancho Relaxo in Sebastopol, The Village Recorder in Los Angeles, and Fantasy Studios in Berkeley.
Six producers, six directions
The trouble was not a lack of ideas but a surplus of outside voices. Six different producers worked on the record: the band themselves, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Stewart Copeland, Tom Waits, Matt Stone, and Fred Durst. Each brought a different idea of what Primus should sound like, and the band absorbed all of it.
Durst pushed hardest. While producing the single 'Lacquer Head' with the group, he urged them to recapture the aggressive metal bite of their early albums. The genre tags attached to Antipop tell the story: a mix of nu-metal, alternative metal, funk metal, funk rock, and experimental rock. It was an album trying to be many things at once.
Claypool on creative exhaustion
Les Claypool, the band's singer and bassist, called Antipop the most difficult Primus record. The tension was not only between the three members; the label had doubts too. Claypool later said the band had run out of creative fuel, that they were 'sucking dirt.' In a 2015 interview, he called the album somewhat aimless and his least favorite Primus release.
The label wanted Primus on the nu-metal festival circuit, at Family Values and Ozzfest. Claypool admitted the band played those shows and made friends, but he never felt it was the right place. He joked years later that Primus was a 'frog' band: you open for Primus, you become huge. The joke hid a real discomfort. The album also carried a small hidden detail. About 38 seconds into the title track, a voice says "They're Here," a line from the film Poltergeist. It was a quiet nod buried inside a record already crowded with outside ideas.
The three-year silence
After the album came out, Primus stopped. From 2000 to 2003 the band took a break that Claypool described as three people who did not want to be near each other, who wanted to split but could not bring themselves to do it. He believed the group halted before everything went truly bad, and that Antipop was the closest they came to that edge.
He believed the group halted before everything went truly bad, and that Antipop was the closest they came to that edge.
Yet Antipop was not a failure. Critics mostly welcomed it, and it climbed to number 44 on the US Billboard 200. The album was also the last Primus record with drummer Brian 'Brain' Mantia. After the hiatus, the band returned, but the version that made Antipop never recorded together again. James Hetfield and Jim Martin both played guitar on the song "Eclectic Electric." The album's credits also included Tom Waits, Fred Durst, and Tom Morello as guests. Their presence showed how many different worlds Primus touched on one record.
Claypool looked back in 2022 and remembered how many nu-metal bands toured with Primus. The band had been a launching pad for others, a strange amphibious creature in a scene they never fully joined. Antipop remains the sound of a band pulled in every direction, deciding to walk away before the pull tore them apart.