Pop Reviews : Primus Plies Primo Art-Funk at Palace

Primus’ mini-symphonies for slam-dancers are more cerebral than brutal, full of tricky meters and dynamic drops. Nearly every song the Bay Area band played at the Palace on Thursday--its biggest headlining show in L.A.--featured some kind of abrupt halt to the forward thrust: a sudden teasing stop, an extended segment at about a tenth of the working volume.

Whether the audience took these as artful musical inventions or as breathing breaks between rounds of dance-floor upheaval, they serve as the kind of signature that a band like Primus needs to set it apart from its colleagues in the crowded area of art-funk-thrash-metal.

The Palace show spotlighted the trio’s finesse, as drummer Tim Alexander and guitarist Larry LaLonde worked with seemingly telepathic intuition around Les Claypool’s elaborate funk-bass foundation. Add Claypool’s twangy, half-taunting, half-trance-like vocals and some crushing, bouncing beats and you’ve got a Mothers-of-Invention-for-the-’90s rock ritual, and a band544499809