| Mike Patton in full Nuremberg Rally mode |
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Metropolis, Fremantle, Australia.
It has alas, been a little while since I witnessed this and have to rely on memory to cobble this reportage up. I could wail like whining minnie at the obstacles of work, study and a film project that have prevented me in getting on with this. Or I could also mention the by no means small truth of not knowing where to start; a situation compounded by the fact that there's never a time when everything is finished, there's only brief respite, by which time my brain feels like it's been recently exhumed.
Nevertheless - it all takes place at the end of the world: Fremantle. Well, end of the world in that it seems to be that everytime an international band plays here, its the last night of their tour. From what I remember of Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe and Everything (bear with me on this one, I haven't read this book since I was twelve), the end of our opulent, spiralling universe is marked by a a dingy, monochrome cafe that could have been spewed out from any street corner. Fremantle looks like a flat pack assembled English seaside town; remarkably similar to Torquay in fact. It's kind of disappointing to travel to the opposite end of the planet to find things look exactly the same. Same style houses with matching pointy guttering, same Burger King (only here its called Hungry Jacks).
It can get a shade boring.
So tonight Fantomas are here to blooden up the atmosphere with the sound of rotating pig knives carving through fresh whale meat.
Or at least something sounding a little like that. It's been a long time since the pervy enfant terrible of arch metal popsters Faith No More vyed for world domination. Not that the man seems to have aged at all. I don't know how he does it. Hmm, I dunno, maybe if Johnny Depp was a paedophile... Perhaps its the FBI t-shirt he's wearing that only heightens his air of high class depravity. Although I did hear he keeps his legendarily elastic vocal chords in such fine condition thanks to piping hot semen. It's a shame, the BBC radio interviewer I heard that from hastily cut to a song before he got round to explaining whether that's semen he keeps in a bottle, or has freshly squeezed...
Fantomas enter to Team America, fuck yeah! From here on in they attempt to demolish more instruments than I know the names of. It's stunning. This situation hasn't been made any less shocking by our proximity to the speaker wall. Time was I was always the last one to leave the party; nowadays I always seem to be the one perched against the stack, getting my ears redefined and my brain reorganized. For the uninitiated, describing Fantomas' music is, er, tricky. So first some pedigree. Fantomas, named after an anti-hero from a series of pre-WWI French crime novels, is a cobbling together of metal pariahs (Mike Patton, ex_Faith No More and a ziq-quillion other side projects, Buzz Osborne, of the Melvins, Trevor Dunn on bass (Mr. Bungle, Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant), I'm not sure if this kid's shy, but I didn't even notice this guy was on stage until two thirds of the way through, and ex_Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo) who've obviously spent more time watching cartoons than any respectable medical board would ever deem healthy. Not that the kids mind cartoons - besides the expected mix of sweaty rock beards and knotty natty dreadlocks, there are nerds, nerds, nerds as far as the eye can see. I'm tempted to call in a few random Domino's employees to see how many people here they can identify.
Suspended Animation, Fantomas' newie, is a full metal tribute to the art of cartoon music. What's more impressive than mind boggling, superhuman virtuosity is some of the noises they've managed to recreate on stage - zounds - and the cartoon samples... They've brought them here too to dismantle and reaugment with hammer like arrangements. Great, now I'm going to have dreams that I'm being chased by fifty Tomcats armed with machettes. And at the heart of it all is Patton, saluting the crowd like some priest of high weirdity, and singing into four different shaped microphones attached to chaos boxes other gizmos, twisting and blistering him into a millirange of expressions. I think my favourite is the one that sounds like someone stomping up and down on a bucketful of crickets. Tomorrow night I'll be watching the Mountain Goats, of whom much of devotion comes from their sometimes piquant, sometimes devastating, always ingenious lyrics. Fantomas I'm happy, nay ravenous, for the incomprehensible babbling.
Whilst Patton manipulates boxes, synthesizers and general screaming from the right hand side of the stage, the left is occupied by Dave Lombardo and quite possibly the world's largest drum kit. I remember at school that any kid who had a drum kit was always the spoilt kid of rich parents, given not only the cost but the fact you need to be at the opposite end of a monster size house whilst they practice. Lombardo's parents must have been gold miners. "Hey Dad, can I have can I have a rapid-firing kick drum, and a snare and some toms, big ones, oh yeah, and some chimes, and some more toms and another kick. And can I have the world's biggest gong please - it's a bronze behmoth, god knows the weight of it, and wha - eight cymbals I can count. None of this is including the bizarre range of cool percussiony shapes I can't hope to guess the names of. In the middle is Buzz underneath what is possibly the world's biggest afro - its like all the afros of the Jackson 5 rolled into one - you could make a tent out of it. Looking oddly disconsolate and barely moving at all, he peels off pulsating astro-metal acrobatics with all the disdain of a Parisian waiter. Ah yes, and the shy looking bass kid at the back; I've heard of lack of stage presence but managing to remain invisible for nearly the entire gig - that's furtive.
The biggest cheer of the night goes up for Homer's "when I was 17, I drank beer and listened to queen". Patton orchestrates his faithful through an hour of ear shredding unpredictability. Seriously, I've listened to the Suspended Animation album lots, it's great for doing the vacuuming to, and I still don't know what's going to happen next. He announces this is the last night of their tour and who would like to get pregnant. I guess I'm out of the running. Still, wouldn't it be great to have a brood of hyper-active little Patton-rats running round and operatically screaming at CatDOg. They finish with a, ahem, stylised version of Al Green's Simply Beautiful, a slow dance number if ever i heard one, if it was for this damned ringing in my ears I swear I'd be hearing gussets popping all over the auditorium.
Fantomas leave to a mournful version of Team America. Marvelous. I shall have to visit an ear specialist and plead for an explanation as to why police sirens are chasing me everywhere, although I may have to take up lip reading to understand his diagnosis.
As witnessed by G.
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More gig photos here.
During a part of the gig which seemed to feature some sort of Gregorian chanting a goth chick who works at a record label which specialises in experimental metal / grindcore / industrial soundscapes, I was chatting to, well yelling into each others ears with, was in no uncertain terms labelling Patton God. I suggested something more like Satan. She then suggested that God and Satan are the same person. Is this everyday chit-chat for HM industry workers???
outpatients