Warthur A weirdly sunny album for the crushingly heavy Fantomas - don't worry, the riffs and vocal work are still as bizarre as ever, but they are augmented this time by the beeping and booping of children's toys, playful cartoon music, and giggling kids. Maybe Patton, Osborne, Lombardo and Dunn were in a particularly chirpy mood, but this is like candy floss for alternative and extreme metal fans - a brace of experimental brief tracks (with titles inspired by various holidays and festivals during the month of April) displaying a joyous playfulness and even a certain happiness which the dark aesthetic of extreme metal tends to spurn. Happy times.

siLLy puPPy SUSPENDED ANIMATION is the fourth album by the extremely bizarre super-group FANTÔMAS led by the always eccentric Mike Patton who once again doesn’t disappoint in the weirdness department. On this installment in the FANTÔMAS universe we get a dual theme of incorporating their energetic speed sludge with cartoon music and other sounds of innocence ranging from children playing to little kids’ toys. The album was released as a regular album and as a limited edition which is the one i have. This package is as bizarre as the music it holds. It is bound with one of those metal spirals that are on notebooks and it contains a mini calendar which has a page for each day in the month of April accompanied by the artwork of Yoshitomo Nara who blends the innocence of youth with dark and disturbing imagery.

After an album of soundtrack theme interpretation and another strange album that only contained one track lasting over an hour, FANTÔMAS goes back to the formula of their debut and ups the surreality a few notches by delivering an extreme roller coaster ride of sonic madness. This is some frantic stuff this one but the sound effects and music are seamlessly blended together coming and going without notice and the production is absolutely brilliantly executed and is dizzying to the mind how long it took to blend all these sounds and musical outbursts together so well. Generally speaking the thirty short tracks which start with some kind of cartoonish sound effects are either inspired by or directly borrowed from various sources including Warner Bros and other Carl Stalling creations and then morphs into energetic speed sludge hysteria. Mike Patton only creates wordless vocalizations which seem to take the lead in directing the rest of the band to follow.

There are all kinds of different rhythms, moods and sound effects streaming at the speed of light throughout this one but if you are already familiar with Mike Patton’s other works including the other FANTÔMAS albums you will hear familiar ideas only tweaked to be even weirder than before. This is a hard listen at first (and second and third!!!) but if you embrace the extremely demented creations of maddened genii then you might appreciate this one. This exists in a universe that few will dare to tread but for those who do be warned that even though you will find hummable melodies galore, the franticness of this wild concoction will demand multiple listens to get the gist of.

Stooge Well, what have we here?

This time around, the group took inspiration from children’s cartoon shows. The album’s packaging, which takes the form of a calendar with some interesting artwork, is a good visual compliment for what they are going for. The track names are days of the month, ranging from April 1 to 30 of 2005.

Along with The Director’s Cut, this might be the most accessible Fantomas get. After going unconventional with just one long track on Delerium Cordia, they go back to the quick sound bursts that they used on their debut album. It doesn’t make much difference, since Fantomas is basically a group that requires their albums be listened to from beginning to end (with The Directors Cut being the exception).

Now, I haven’t heard anything this extreme on a cartoon (though I’d love it!). The frantic pacing of the album does feature several calming passages as well as samples and sound effects that may sound familiar to lovers of Warner Bros or Saturday morning cartoons in general. Some of the sounds are reminiscent of what you’d hear from the toys in accompanying commercials. The album may sound all over the place to someone not used to experimental music, but with repeated listens the transitions sound more natural.

Who knows when the next Fantomas album will arrive (if ever), but this is an excellent listen that would certainly not be an under-whelming finale.