By Adam McDermott

The music of Les Claypool can be described as nothing less than a sonic thunderstorm, and Sunday night the sonata of his Frog Brigade rained down on Providence like never before.

The down and dirty Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel was filled to the brim with Claypool-ites by the beginning of the second opening act, Project Object (a Frank Zappa cover band).

Though the members of the Project were all bona fide musicians, the intensity of their performance, as compared to an actual Zappa album, was lackluster. Their saving grace, however, was that one of them actually did look like Frank Zappa.

All openers aside, it was Claypool the people came for, and while Project was scurrying about the stage picking up all of their Zappa mimicking tools, the Frog Brigade’s roadies were rolling out the artillery.

In the midst of a last ditch exodus to the bathrooms and the bar, before The Brigade had even set foot in the smoke filled room, excitement arose from the crowd when each of Claypool’s basses appeared on-stage for tuning.

His axes included the revered one-stringed “Whamola” (a contraption played with a drumstick and a whammy bar-like handle), his signature Carl Thompson four string bass, and a fretless standup bass. Then, from under the stage’s murky blue halo, they emerged