Fantomas - Suspended Animation
Ipecac - IPC-062 - 05/04/2005
By Patrick Walsh
Hot on the heels of last year's almost inpenetrable, yet nonetheless mesmerizing avant-garde ambient head-fuck
Delirium Cordia, comes its follow up
Suspended Animation. Recorded simultaneously as
Delirium...,
Suspended Animation represents the opposite end of the
Fantomas school of music. Where
Delirium Cordia used silence, tension and dread to suck in the listener,
Suspended Animation grabs you from the off and pushes you headfirst into the oblique world of a cartoonish nightmare. Yes folks, Mike Patton and his band of trouble-makers never fail to make life difficult for their listeners, but that's all a part of the fun you see.
Buzz Osbourne (
Melvins) fills the record with the kind of monstrous chops we've come to expect from such a pioneer of the
riff, whilst Dave Lombardo (
Slayer) once again uses his drum-kit to percussively bludgeon the listener with all manner of blast-beats and fills that are simply amazing. Trever Dunn's (
Mr. Bungle) bass is as solid as ever, and along with Osbourne's guitar creates an intimidatingly heavy sound that rarely lets up. In case you're wondering, Patton hasn't decided to revert to singing in his
Faith No More mould, and yelps, screeches, groans and roars as the riffs twist, turn and the songs judder, stop, and start at almost random intervals. If this is sounding familiar, then that's because it is.
Suspended Animation plays like the self-titled debut with an added ferocity, plus the insertion of a devious cartoon silliness that renders the whole thing darkly absurd. There are all manner of weird sound effects at work here, samples of children's toys, nursery rhymes and the like, that when placed alongside some serious riffing from Osbourne, Patton's vocal histronics and the sheer unpredictablness of it all creates a disturbingly effective soundtrack for someone with Coulrophobic nightmares. To top things off, there's thirty tracks and each one is named after a day in April of this year, so you have '04/01/05', '04/02/05' etc. Written for those of an edgy disposition, so that they might be pushed over the edge. Brilliant.
9/10
Ipecac's Official Website
