Fantmas – Suspended Animation LP

Description

Fantomas – Suspended Animation / Reissue of the band’s fourth album for Ipecac’s 25th Anniversary. Vinyl LP pressing. 2005 album from the alternative metal band.

Although they have always had a signature sound (grounded in the heavy, manic, precise, and strange), Fantmas have been fairly adventurous from album to album. So it’s a little surprising that — after hopping from the metal-horror spastics of their debut to an album of film music covers onDirector’s CuttoMillennium Monsterworks(an almost traditional metal album in collaboration withthe Melvins) and, finally, to last year’s epic single-trackDelirium Cordia– Fantmas would arrive back at the start. Like their self-titled debut, Suspended Animation is a concept album. The debut was a 30-song soundtrack to a comic book, with each song taking a page number as its title. This disc appears to be the soundtrack to April of 2005, with each song titled after one of the month’s 30 days — which brings us to the monumental artwork that accompanies the CD: a glossy elaborate 30-day calendar illustrated by Japanese artistYoshitomo Nara. The intersecting innocence and mischief ofNara’s punk munchkins match the tone of Fantmas, at least for this album. The heavy use of samples that has been a steady part of the Fantmas sound is here, but instead of the horror-movie shrieks that their first album leaned heavily on, it’s a litany of bonks and whistles straight from classic cartoons.Mike Patton, who once again wrote all the music, is more focused than ever here. The songs (or sections, as Fantmas albums often feel like one long composition chopped into bite-size chunks) are shorter and even more frenzied; there’s less brooding menace and more giddy insanity — without ever giving way to total chaos. For all of his eclecticism,Pattonhas always had a clear vision and worked within a defined set of themes, from his work withMr. Bungleto the present. Anyone who wonders what that vision and those themes add up to should look no further than Suspended Animation, which offers one of the clearest and most potent distillations yet. -All Music Guide