THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

This album is REALLY, REALLY GOOD and it ideed has more "sense" and "frames" than the first album, but isnt any less experimental. Album contains theme tunes from horror movies heavily modified. For example theme from godfather opens with that original, beautiful theme from movie but then...next thing to happen is fast, superb drumming and patton screaming to your ear: "GODFATHER" repeatedly. Soon you think: this is it: Fantomas at it's best! Must listen. Four stars because this is not album for any mood. It is very very brilliant listen with mood for Fantomas: fast trash,experimental voices,Patton, more voices and of course dark, fast "guitar melodies" and a lot more. Give it a spin if you like anything else from Patton's experimental work ala Bungle. Masterpiece..

This album is Fantomas at their best, that's not to say their other two albums aren't either though. It's chaotic, creepy and loud. Some of the are very intense (The Godfather, Vendetta) but many build up and explode in your ears (Rosemary's Baby, Henry-Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion). While this album won't appeal to everyone, it has a lot to offer to those willing to give it a try.

"The Director's Cut" is really the only accessible album of this band and not only this, it's moreover a very good album. Sometimes chaotic, mostly loud and scary but with some "nice" moments as well. For an album with mere music from horror movies soundtracks really good stuff, I've got to say. Really the only one of FANTOMAS I could not only support but even enjoy. I'm not sure whether one could call it a good addition to any prog collection but If you look for a good album of this band go for this one!!!

Excellent, but I cannot give it the masterpiece stamp. Hey, it's basically a covers album, EXCEPT it's FANTOMAS covering the music, that's why I give it the 4 stars.

Excuse the 5 star rating, but I may be a bit biased here (my first album was "The Real Thing" by Faith No More at age 5, which features vocalist Mike Patton). Although, I don't really like the other material they've released (except Suspended Animation sounds really good, so far). You don't have to necessarily be a fan of the other works to like this one. It's more musical and very much less noise.

This album is a bunch of film score compositions covered by FANTOMAS. They do a brilliant job at recreating them in a very differnt fashion. Some films here are very obscure, some old, and some very popular "The Godfather" and "The Omen." This album is very fun to listen to and quite humorous. Mike Patton is a vocal acrobat, he always has been. Highlights are many, but I'd choose: The Godfather, The Omen: Ave Satani, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and Charade. If you're looking for something different that you'll really enjoy and occasionally get a kick out of, then buy this album.

Peace & take care

Best album i have heard i long, long time when it comes to say about album being PROGRESSIVE. This one is truly madly deeply PROGRESSIVE and experimental album covering horror movie tunes which you couldnt recognise if you heard the real one afterwards in exception of godfather. Other Fantomas albums are good but this is...this is something different. It accessible but at the same time its an experience worth having many times. I recommend this to anyone who likes experimental music, i say this is a must for mr bungle fans, and i say this is a album to die for to music-fan like i am. Give it a try, and if you like it, i say : just spare money for it and run to the store to buy it immidiately! It has grown on me so much that today i recognise it as a masterpiece of progressive music. MUST HAVE.

Fantomas are crazy! This is the 3rd album I have heard by this band. They have always been hit or miss for me as their material is so unpredictable, edgy, psychotic and difficult to listen to. I found "Delirium Cordia" to be an interesting yet highly messy experimental epic and i found "Suspended Animation" to be an amazing combination of metal and strange digital effects. This album however doesn't really excite me as much as the previous ones that I have listened to, maybe because it is still an early part of their discogrpahy.

I found "The Directors Cut" to be a neat idea, mainly consisting of twisted cover versions of horror movie theme music. The Fantomas sound is definitely there but it seems like a rather uninspiring and less epic album. The thing i liked about the other albums is that they seem to be one giant epic (regardless of how many tracks they may have), whilst this one seemed less like an epic and more like a collection of random tunes. There is little to enjoy here, the album is quite annoying and the whole movie concept seems a bit lacking in ideas.

It is interesting to see how well the band have worked these tunes and claimed them as their own, but I would much rather have heard some of the bands own written material. Overall this is quite an interesting listen, yet not an album I really get on with very well.

Fantômas - The Director's Cut

I suppose unlike most people I never heard of Mike Patton before I heard a song of this Fantômas album.. That's right.. I must have been living under a rock; I never heard a single song of his world famous Faith No More band. I know, I'm a cultural nitwit...

So back to Fantômas then... It was actually here on ProgArchives that I first a song by this innovative project. It was the incredible cover of the theme song for the film Rosemary's Baby that really excited me to discover more of the same. This song is true to the original, yet it is clearly an own rendition by this talented bunch of musicians.

In the meanwhile I discovered more of Patton's musical escapades and I learned that he is quite the genius... He has this very typical sound and style of music. I also discovered that most of his music shares the same type of tendencies, especially vocal wise, just like on this song "Rosemary's Baby"... Either you have his dreamy clean vocals or you get his high-pitched 'screaming voice'... What's also pretty remarkable about his voice is that Patton uses it as an instrument as well on certain moments. Something else that I noticed while listening to Fantômas as well as those other projects by Mike Patton was that the man is not too ashamed of putting a bit of humour in his compositions...

Well back to "The Director's Cut" then. As you might have noticed already, the 16 compositions on this album are all covers of famous and lesser famous film soundtracks. To be quite honest, I love watching films and I've seen quite a bunch of them, but I was not really familiar with any of the ones included here... But that did not keep me from enjoying this album. Quite the opposite actually: after listening to this album over and over again, I began to get very interested in hearing the original scores to the films and I started searching the various films. I mean, I became a David Lynch fan mostly because Fantômas' cover of the Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me theme kept haunting me for days!

Fantômas recreate 15 (the one remaining track -#13- is just a few seconds of silence) film soundtracks in their highly original manner, ranging from still from spacey electro rock to trash metal and back... As I said before the vocals are pretty varied and this in combination with several extreme metal parts might make this album a bit tough to 'get into', but nevertheless I think it's one hell of a progressive effort nevertheless, so don't get fooled by the extreme short track lengths (at least short by 'progressive' terms)!

3.5 stars

Ladies and Gentlemen ... Mike Patton sings!

In Fantomas' discography so far, The Director's cut is the joker in the pack. We have the high concept - cover versions of famous film theme songs; the Zorn reference - Naked City's debut album likewise featured several adaptations of movie themes; but on this occasion Mike Patton chose to sing at least some of the songs with intelligible lyrics in the English language and recognisable melodies. The results are highly - and surprisingly - enjoyable, and show yet another intriguing facet of Mike Patton's bizarre imagination.

The Director's cut works for several reasons. First and foremost it's a valuable reminder of just how good a singer Mike Patton can be, and his voice lends itself especially well to the themes of the films noir and horror movies which have been such a strong influence on his work. It's also a project that doesn't take itself too seriously - although Mike and the boys play it more or less straight, their tongues are planted firmly in their cheeks and there's a camp, slightly ghoulish sense of humour in evidence throughout. None of which means that Fantomas have gone soft - far from it. Many of the songs feature an interlude of the ear bleeding death metal that they do so well, but some of the genre blending eclecticism of Mr Bungle is also in evidence; their take on the cocktail hour jazz of 1960s is remarkably convincing. Finally, they pull off the neat trick of remaining faithful to the spirit of the original versions while still sounding unmistakably like themselves. Stand out tracks include Rosemary's Baby and Experiment in Terror, the latter featuring a relatively straightforward vocal part, but there isn't a weak track on here.

The Directors Cut is the most accessible Fantomas album to date, but also the least representative of their ever mutating sound. Apparently What A Feeling from Flashdance was to have been included, which would have been intriguing, and it would have been interesting to hear their interpretation of a James Bond theme (From Russia With Love would get my vote, in the extremely unlikely event that any of the band read this [and should they decide to make Directors Cut vol. 2]), but you can't have everything. Recommended.

I'm basically a sucker for Mike Patton. No matter if it's his work with Faith No More, Tomahawk, Mr.Bungle, Fantômas, Peeping Tom or the solo material Patton manages to put his own twist into every single one of these projects.

Doing covers of popular movie scores would seem quite harmless unless you let Fantômas handle the project! Yes, this type of music idea has already been explored by others, most notably John Zorn's Naked City, but just like I mentioned earlier Patton's projects have his unique twist to them that I just adore. Especially if you have an excellent Death Metal drummer like Dave Lombardo on board who adds that Slayer flavor into the mix that we all expect him to.

This set of compositions is just another crazy output from Mike Patton and the lineup that I can't quite explain so you just have to take my word for it. This material is definitely not recommended to everyone out there which can be understood by looking at the RIO/Avant-Prog tag that this project has received. Sometimes the music is intense, sometimes very diverse but most of the time it's just freaking out-of-this-world!

***** star songs: Experiment In Terror (2:40) Vendetta (1:59)

**** star songs: The Godfather (2:46) Der Golem (2:38) One Step Beyond (2:58) Night Of The Hunter (Remix) (0:58) Cape Fear (1:48) Rosemary's Baby (3:20) The Devil Rides Out (Remix) (1:38) The Omen (1:49) Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (3:08) Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion (4:00) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (3:28) Charade (3:04)

*** star songs: Spider Baby (2:26) Untitled (0:04)

Weird (but somehow cool) soundtrack covers.

The music of Fantomas is not that easy to listen or dig, nor to classify, they also have something quite different to offer from one album to other, but with somewhat their own sound.

If you are familiar with Mike Patton´s works, you might know that he is an incredibly innovative and imaginative singer, he has incurred to different styles and always managed to sound interesting; with Fantomas, and in particular in this album, his vocal work is pretty good because together with the music it makes a weird but nice communion, so as a result their compositions are pretty good.

What you will find, in this album named "The Director's Cut", are 16 short songs taken from some soundtracks of interesting movies, and transformed to that Fantomas sound, with aggressiveness in several moments, but quietness in others, inviting the listener to explore and imagine those songs ala Fantomas taking you to the film itself. I have to be honest, and tell you that the first time I listened to The Godfather's Theme, I really laugh about it, I said that was ridiculous, but with time and actually opening my mind, I understand that all of that had a goal.

This album has 16 songs and a total time of 39 minutes, so the songs are pretty short; their tag here is a RIO-Avant band, yeah that may be accurate but in this case some of their songs sound as a metal band (you know, I am not an expert on that matter, so after all that is not important)

My favourite songs are "Experiment in Terror"; "Rosemary's Baby" and "Twin Peaks", strong songs that will catch you.

The album is nice, you will hear something different and even entertaining, but as a prog fan, I only listen to this every once in a while, not very keen on Fantomas music actually, but this is good. My final grade is 3 stars.

Enjoy it!

Mike Patton, the genius behind Faith No More, Mr. Bungle and countless other projects is also the genius behind Fantomas. With Fantomas, he has explored a wide array of musical styles by putting his own stamp of craziness on it, but this project is one of his most eclectic. What you have in this album is a collection of movie soundtrack covers, most of which are from horror movies from composers like Henry Mancini and John Barry. Even though there are some very orchestrated tracks here, including the opening track "Theme from The Godfatther" don't let that fool you. The Godfather is very straightforward, almost something you would hear on an elevator, except with clean clear sound and amazing production which raises it above the typical orchestral cover. But after that, things turn sharply south.

Most of the tracks are crazy studies in extreme listening, from heavy harsh vocals and crashing guitars to mysterious sounding keyboards and deep voices, the tracks are mostly faithful to the originals, except that you have Mike's crazy vocals (he uses his voice effectively as an instrument and for singing throughout this album), the band's orchestration is all over the place and it is one wild, frantic ride for your ears. Scary atmospheres for the most part, amazing how the first track makes you feel so safe and lures you into this asylum of otherwise manic music. This is RIO in the extreme, so be ready for it, and most of the shock value of the extremes will be easier to handle.

So everyone has heard covers of movie theme music, but you haven't heard one like this. If you know Mike Patton and just how wild he can be, then you can imagine what this is like. Maybe this is one of Fantomas most accessible albums, but I don't think many untrained minds will get past the 2nd track without a blown brain socket. I agree it is the best Fantomas album and most enjoyable, because I admit I have a very hard time with "Suspended Animation" (which is a collection of songs that sound like cartoon music with sound effects and chaos from start to finish) and their other albums, but I find this one very exciting, original, groundbreaking and a definite masterpiece of avant garde progressive music, this album sets the bar for one of the best in that subgenre in my opinion. Essential and a masterpiece. 5 stars.

The second Fantomas album improves on the first by offering a more distinct concept - it's Fantomas doing various movie soundtracks, focusing on but not limiting themselves to the horror genre. Naturally, you wouldn't have expected them to play these without substantial rearrangement and reimagination (plus here and there the insertion of some appropriate lyrics to keep Patton in the loop), and it's the off-kilter take on the various material here which keeps things fresh and original and allows it to rise above the status of your typical album of cover songs. Terse and troubling, The Director's Cut sees Fantomas finding its feet and purpose.