The Director's Cut

Album Review

Fantomas stand with their feet planted horizontally across the soft dimensions of your face, warping the shape of your skull and shoulders with their off-color explosions. With expectations withering on the floor, leaving a viscous stink, nothing in their hands is concrete. As a follow-up to their 30-song debut, throughout which vocalist Mike Patton never formed a single actual word, Fantomas offer these 16 new creations, all realigned versions of film soundtracks, ranging from the notorious theme to Rosemary's Baby to the obscure and peculiar wank of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. While there are many similarities to the dispersed flip-flopping styles of their earlier work, The Director's Cut breaks new ground with a thick jagged axe. First, most noticeably, are the even more varied vocal stylings; Patton's sweet croon on "Experiment in Terror" is nothing you've heard before from him on a Fantomas recording, along with many of the other croaking, spitting, p*****g, screaming noises he excretes. Yet another testament to the unabashed genius of Mike Patton and his co-conspirators, leaving those caught up in the rapture with mouths even more full with thick drool.