Fantômas Album Reviews

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Fantômas (1999)
The Director's Cut (2001)

Very few plans sounded as exciting as Mike Patton's, when he announced that the first album to be released by his newly found label - Ipecac Recordings - would be one by this unlikely 'supergroup' featuring drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer, Grip Inc.), guitarist Buzz Osborne (Melvins), bass player Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle & other projects) and Patton himself. Fortunately, the results almost topped the expectations, as Fantômas probably baffled all but a few hardcore fans that could've predicted this. Apart from Patton with Faith No More, none of these guys had ever been involved in anything even remotely commercial (I mean, when you start a band with Osborne, you just know you shouldn't expect sing-along anthems or "stuff to rock out to"), and the result is one huge kick under conformity's ass. Taking the alienating approach of Mr. Bungle and the frantic jazzcore energy of Naked City as a starting point, these four monsters of players created a dazzling 30 song accompaniment to a (non-existent?) comic book. At merely 43 minutes, this suggests that the average song is quite short - and with almost half of these songs being under one minute, it almost sounds as if they re-recorded The Residents' Commercial Album in hell. Since each 'song' is so short and represents another page in the book, you'd be better off calling these songs 'pieces'. There's no conventional structure to them, as atmosphere and frantically alternating sections continually disrupt the conventions. A few of them meander patiently, like miniature Bernard Herrmann soundtracks, others are wildly eclectic and violent noise bursts that incorporate elements from avant-garde, thrash, hardcore and all-out noise. Lombardo switches from lumbering minimalism to ultra-fast and bombastic drum assaults in a split second, Dunn tries to keep up, and in the meantime Osborne alternates Melvins-heavy plodding with scathingly hot punk riffs, random noises and nauseating sounds. The focus of the album, however, lies on the vocal gymnastics of conductor Patton, who purrs, wheezes, mumbles, sighs, croons, roars, bellows, coughs, squeals and, most of all, screeches his way through this album. Rivaled only by Diamanda Galas and Eye (Boredoms, Naked City), he breaks totally with the rules of rock and instead worships at the altar of sound, and the gallery of sounds he manages to utter is, simply put, baffling. While it's repeatedly unbelievable a human being actually makes the sounds you're hearing, the occasionally treated vocals create an ominous gothic, camp or sci-fi atmosphere. One moment it's as if you're hearing a Martian deliver a version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "Constipation Blues" and a few seconds later you wonder if Patton has transformed into a game console's sound card. The one huge drawback here is of course the length. Believe me, nearly 43 minutes of this IS hard to take (so that's an "8" when I'm in a good, violent mood) and there ARE limits to what you can do with four people, yet the band manages to keep things so eclectic, original and perplexing, you'll have a hard time closing your mouth after you've finished page 30. It's a great hear!

The Director's Cut (2001)

7.5

The Godfather / Der Golem / Experiment in Terror / One Step Beyond / Night of the Hunter (Remix) / Cape Fear / Rosemary's Baby / The Devil Rides Out (Remix) / Spider Baby / The Omen (Ave Satani) / Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer / Vendetta / Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion / Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me / Charade

Attentive spectators and listeners could've seen this merciless soundtrack-raping coming, since Patton's work with Mr. Bungle and the Fantômas debut already betrayed an infatuation with soundtracks that arguably started while being under the influence of avant-garde pope John Zorn. The sax-man and his Naked City project not only were a MASSIVE influence on Fantômas (Patton's admiration even went as far as him claiming that 15 years after their dissolution, Naked City still make every band sound fat and lazy), because of the adventurousness, provocative creed (Mikey has never been your conventional front guy either) and pure, almost childish curiosity, a desire to explore extremities. The cartoon-ish quality of Fantômas' music, a result from this restless genre-hopping, the relentlessly brash switching of those genres and the indebtedness to movie scores owe a debt to Zorn, who some 17 years before Fantômas already recorded his own tribute to one of the masters of the art (Ennio Morricone) with The Big Gundown, an endlessly fascinating re-interpretation of well-known, as well as obscure pieces by the Italian composer. However, The Director's Cut is an entirely different beast, and not only because it offers radical interpretations of work by more than one composer (14, actually). Whereas the Zorn album could be seen as an experimental tribute to Morricone, a work that became a vehicle for Zorn to play with Morricone's tricks, themes and styles and put 'em in his own frame of reference, this album here feels a lot more like a pastiche (if not a parody), as each song is basically give "the Fantômas-treatment," which you could consider a synonym for "violently used and abused, turned into a grotesque, occasionally unrecognisable freak-core version of itself." Patton & Co. often keep things fairly straightforward for longer stretches which allows you to holler "Hey, I know that one, isn't that from…", but a few seconds later, the theme might function in a kind of thrash-hardcore-noise-feast that hovers between the brutal attack of Slayer, the frantic lunacy of Melt Banana and the mathematical precision of the Dillinger Escape Plan or any like-minded band. Family fun, it ain't.

Like their debut album, The Director's Cut is an extremely demanding album (although more accessible), especially since not all of these originals have become/remained well-known classics. Most listeners will be familiar with the Italian melancholy of Nino Rota's unforgettable score for The Godfather, while also "The Omen," "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" (not a theme of the series) and "Rosemary's Baby" might ring a bell, but apart from that? It took me a few minutes of Google to find out that One Step Beyond was a kind of proto-Twilight Zone in 1958, The Devil Rides Out a 1968 Christopher Lee-movie and Spider Baby a campy cult movie no one remembers. On top of that, if they did decide to tackle material by the greats, they didn't necessarily pick the most familiar works: "Vendetta" was a 60's series John "Bond" Barry worked on, Morricone's "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" isn't half as notorious as his western scores, while Mancini's popular pieces were the theme from The Pink Panther and "Moon River," not the stuff chosen here. As for the music: the album starts off on a really strong note, as the first three songs - "downhearted beauty transforms into hysterical mania and back," "Rammstein tortured by Beëlzebub" and the perverse "sleazy lounge-fest interrupted by nauseatingly intense bit," respectively - are surprisingly conventional and entertaining songs (i.e. they have, well, a kind of structure you might understand… and a melody too!). After that, it's a bit of a hit-or-miss affair, as some songs don't get the time to develop in something really substantial ("Night of the Hunter"), are too similar ("One Step Beyond," "The Devil Rides Out") or nearly drown in their own pompousness (you pick one). But again, there are also too many factors to just dismiss it. As you listen to the horrifying rendition of "Rosemary's Baby," you'll realize that the band has more in common with the "harmless" idiocy of a schizoid in a mental ward than the paranoid threat of an antisocial psychopath on the streets - it's just too much - but it also guarantees you'll slap your knees in repeated disbelief. These guys are loud and sick, but also skilled and tight as fuck. How many bands would dare to play something like this? How many bands could play something like this? It becomes them that they didn't turn this project into some Audioslave-styled retro-exercise and opted for a more daring adventure instead. The results aren't always successful, but when they do hit the mark, it's a damn exciting racket you hear.