DELÌRIVM CÒRDIA

While the casual Fantomas fan may want to begin with The Director's Cut (most accessible of their albums) Delirium Corida is hands down their crowning achievement. A masterpiece in every sense of the word. This is most ambitious, risk-taking album they've done. It not only combines every element of Fantomas' repetoire, but it adds some of its own. This album is the closest experience you can have of a near-death or deathlike experience without going to the hospital. The sound effects alone exhibit a nightmarish soundscape of surgery and emergency rooms, but then the music just pushes everything over the edge. Mike Patton elicits every sound in his vocabulary from gentle crooning to abrasive screaming and yelping. What's more, if you're wearing headphones, the bone-scraping sounds actually FEEL like they're in your head. Some of the other surgery-themed sound- effects can also make you a tad queezy if you start thinking about what you're listening to. To top it off, there's even a little bonus for the oldschool vinyl fans after the whole thing's over: taking advantage of the cd format, they play out the rest of what would have been dead cd-space (the actual music is the first hour or so) with the sound of a needle in a runout groove. Back when vinyl was the way to go, records had runout grooves so that all none-automatic turntables would stop before they hit the label. Lots of bands played with that format by putting little phrases and snippets in this groove. Fantomas have pushed that little novelty by tagging a little treat at the end of about 20 or so minutes of the vinyl static.

Let me state that Fantomas aren't for everyone...yet if you're on this site, you're not a Britney Spears or NSync nut: you're a fan of intelligent, thought-provoking music. If you're up to it, Delirium Cordia is the most progressive album of its ilk and you will be hard pressed to find another album that contains the quality, musicianship, and sheer thought- provoking power of this one.