FANTOMAS
Suspended
animation
CD, Ipecac
(Trost)
Woaw, hold on for a second – no you won’t? –
okay, but give me a chance to sit down at least. On its fourth (not counting
the collaboration with the Melvins) album / epic / opus / whatever this is
best called the giant fourpiece of Fantomas turns all knobs to the extreme
opposite of “Delirium Corda”. They take no chances and hit listeners on
the head in the first thirty seconds with what is to come in the next three
quarters of an hour. No prisoners. The result is the most disperse yet
compact, the most eclectic yet consequently structured, the most humorous
yet straightforwardly aggressive piece of music ever released by Fantomas.
The unbelievable amount of breaks and interrupted mosh parts makes
“Suspended Animation” definitely hard stuff to devour. I counted about a
million different parts all together, which is amazing as a technical feat
for memorizing the whole lot (if you are looking for a reason the next
Slayer-album is still not finished yet, look here), but to execute this
convincingly is yet another step upwards. Is this all written down somewhere
somehow?
No easy job for the listener as well. Whereas it was
possible to set yourself into a sort of trance- or semi-dream-state to get
through “Delirium Corda” with open eyes and a sound mind, “Suspended
Animation” will kick you out of any such selfimposed trance within
seconds. Which is, I guess, definitely what Patton et. al. wanted to. Why
should they be easy on their listeners, if they ain’t even easy on
themselves? It is hard to work to get to that step of artistical integrity
and creativity, and even harder work to maintain that level. What escape do
you have but to listen closely?
And you’ll get a lot to listen to. Trying to discern
what is sampled and what has been played by who will keep you occupied for
about two weeks. Next to the coolest moshparts, super speed hyper riffing
and heavy guitars – that were to be expected – there is a lot of madness
and weirdness, like army trumpets, kids laughter, japanese cartoon voices,
jazzy trombones, classical music, digital effects, gargling, chilly and
spooky winds, onomatopeia, hawaian guitar plucking, crashes and blings and
boings, a glockenspiel, more cartoon music, samples from tv-advertisements,
opera, high frequency effects, mexican folk songs and a million crazy things
more. Have you ever rummaged through a gigantic second-hand-store. Much like
this, but in a sort of heavy-metal acid trip. And Pattons trademarked
yelping.
What differentiates “Suspended Animation” from its
most overshadowing pre-decessor – Painkiller – are two things. The
smaller size with which they achieve enormous effects of size, mass and
power. Where John Zorn went for the orchestral size that he worked like a
small military task force for a special combat, Fantomas use their even
smaller size but superiour studio technics (it is almost ten years later
after all – a century in digital technology) to compensate for scale
effects. The second thing that Fantomas has over Painkiller is humour. True,
their jokes might be very inside and at least as weird as their music, but
it is obviously existing. Why else would they pair baby-crying with strange
guttural vocal experiments of Patton? Or the parts where you get the voice
doing the guitar riff on your right ear and the guitar playing the same
simpe machine gun riff in your left ear. I’ll admit, if there is humour in
“Delirium Corda”, then I haven’t found it yet, but the beginning and
end-samples of "Suspended Animation" show more than enough of
their wit.
