I've heard some odd intros over the years but last night was a new one
for the books.
Wednesday, June 17th @ The Village, Dublin, Ireland.
Before Fantomas came out on stage the audience was
subjected to a five minute recording of a man ranting about how much he
hated a particular individual, making epic usage of the word
"cocksucker" to reinforce his point. Then the band came out and took
their positions on the tiny stage, Buzz Osbourne and Trevor Dunn forced
to stand at the back of the stage due to most of the stage being filled
by Terry Bozzio's monstrous drum kit, regular drummer Dave Lombardo was
unable to play due to tour commitments with Slayer. Mike Patton stood
opposite Bozzio behind two tables covered in all sorts of electronic
goodies. From here he orchestrated the entire performance through a
series of winks, hand gestures and motions with any available limb. The
set covered three of Fantomas's studio albums, of course most of the
material came from the current release Suspended Animation and absolutely nothing from last year's Delirium Cordia.
The first two albums were well represented with "Page 29," "Cape Fear,"
and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" being the obvious crowd pleasers.
Although not everyone could be pleased, a substantial chunk of the
audience left within the first fifteen minutes apparently expecting
Faith No More. It was fascinating to see how a band like Fantomas
works, I was expecting a mainly improvised set due to their songs being
so manic but it turns out that their studio work is quite reproducible
live. All of the instruments (including Patton's larynx) were fed
through Patton's extensive effects chains. Sounds from Suspended Animation
that I was expecting to be samples were in fact heavily processed
drums. Similarly the guitar and bass was processed so much as to make
them sound completely at odds with what you expect to come out of Buzz
and Dunn's fingers. The all or nothing noise was as compelling as
watching Patton himself as he flung himself around his little
enclosure, swapping microphones between syllables and altering all of
the music on the fly. There was very little to fault with Fantomas
apart from a slightly muddy sound but The Village is a venue notorious
for woeful sound due to its placing of the mixing desk upstairs and
away from where most of the PA faces. Even with Bozzio's unfamiliarity
with the material didn't interfere with the performance as his few
mistakes were barely noticeable considering the context of Fantomas's
music. Kudos to them for having the shortest encore ever, about one
minute long and most of the crowd left like all their Christmasses came
at once. - John Kealy