Perpetually somewhere in-between – grunge, hard rock, funk, rap, soul, metal – these San Francisco freakazoids found the perfect someone to put them together on their third album. Mike Patton provided them with a charismatic frontman, a multi-faceted voice to match their complex music, and a bandmate who wasn’t gonna punch anyone in the face on stage. The music, some of their best to date, had already been recorded when he joined. Patton rose to the occasion. His vocal contortions on mystery box megahit “Epic” alone must’ve been as shocking in 1989 as the dying fish at the end of the video. Beyond all the genre-shifting pyrotechnics and skate thrash anthems like “Surprise! You’re Dead!,” Patton really added an unexpected vulnerability that punkier predecessor Chuck Mosley couldn’t. His influences weren’t just hard rock and metal – he brought a lot of soul to highlights “From Out of Nowhere,” “Falling to Pieces,” and the title track. Subsequent masterpiece Angel Dust would lean more into the experimental stuff, but The Real Thing accomplished the peculiar feat of being both deeply weird and incredibly commercial.