Fantômas
Fantômas

The experience of a new interplay between music and the enigmatic suggestive power that music itself produces. The decomposition of a flow into individual sound parts that are only seemingly chaotic and disjointed. Or conversely, an unsettling and dramatic musical combustion organized into perfectly sharpened and contrived microstructures: a sort of "logical delirium", assembled like a mosaic, punctuated like a series of frames from an old sci-fi film projected at varying speeds, like onomatopoeic boards from a Diabolik or Kriminal comic book.

Fantômas is the brainchild of the genius and iconoclastic mind of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk and tons of priceless collaborations) in partnership with Dave Lombardo (Slayer or the revolution with two sticks and 5 skins), Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, Trio Convulsant) and Buzz Osborne (who doesn’t know King Buzzo and the Melvins, raise your hand); basically, a bunch of cheerful characters who have always gone hand in hand with the bizarre and the inventive and who share the common goal of surpassing the concept of experimentation through sounds each time. From whatever angle you look at it, this first album from Fantômas is as challenging and insane as it is thrilling and filled with inventions. A 'comic book' of thirty pages, thirty shards each lasting a few minutes, thirty brief clips black as pitch imploding and exploding, tracing a sound path stylistically unplaceable if not in the mayhem of a stammering proto-metal chopped and mixed with twang passages, otherworldly organs, mephistophelian choirs and satanic laughter, gunshots, screams, moans, sighs, and terrifying creaks.

One of those albums to listen to in the dark with the phone unplugged, before putting on the good headphones to hear every little detail; to be listened to casually while reorganizing your noir film library and the bookshelf with black-edged comics; then once more with headphones.
Fantômas is a beautiful, crazy album, free from all typical conventions of musical writing. Because it delivers an impressive series of blows so strong as to collapse the building of good old classic rock, mocking it with a brilliant and dark sense of humor only to chew it up and spew it out with the para-metallic violence of modernity.

Fantômas can. Fantômas is the lord of terror. And it threatens the world.