Band:	Fantômas
Album:	The Director's Cut
Style:	Avantgarde metal
Release date:	July 01, 2001
A review by:	jupitreas

01. The Godfather [Nino Rota cover]
02. Der Golem [Karl Ernst Sasse cover]
03. Experiment In Terror [Henry Mancini cover]
04. One Step Beyond [Harry Lubin cover]
05. Night Of The Hunter [Walter Schumann cover]
06. Cape Fear [Bernard Herrmann cover]
07. Rosemary's Baby [Krzysztof Komeda cover]
08. The Devil Rides Out [James Bernard cover]
09. Spider Baby [Ronald Stein cover]
10. The Omen [Jerry Goldsmith cover]
11. Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer [Robert McNaughton cover]
12. Vendetta [John Barry cover]
13. [untitled]
14. Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion [Ennio Morricone cover]
15. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me [Angelo Badalamenti cover]
16. Charade [Henry Mancini cover]

Mike Patton. Dave Lombardo. Buzz Osborne. Trevor Dunn. These names alone should make this album a must-have for any serious metal fan. Believe me, this music will satisfy the fans of Faith No More, Slayer, the Melvins and Mr. Bungle, as well as almost any metal enthusiast out there. The world's best vocals, best drums, perhaps the most original guitar and very technical bass have to make any album into a masterpiece. Luckily, these four gentlemen do not simply lay back and rely solely on their phenomenal abilities. Rest assured, this is not a show-off album. This is simply a set of completely wacky and mind-numbingly original tracks.

What is the 'Director's Cut'? Why, it is a cover album of some of the most famous movie themes of all time of course. For those of you who don't like cover albums, also rest assured: these are like nothing that you have ever heard before.

We start off with the theme from the Godfather. It begins just like the original but pretty soon changes into a very chaotic piece of grindcore, together with blast beats and growly vocals. Later on, we are able to hear even more awkward combinations, such as a completely distorted and guitar heavy jazz piece, an ultra-fast(Lombardo-style) prayer to Satan, a gothic hip-hop piece or the sound of a baby crying accompanied by a death metal riff. Anyway, every Patton-based project (and Patton is the main arranger here) is known for it's genre-hopping so it is not a very big surprise that this album also follows that idea. What makes me like this album more than most others though, is that this time each attempt at playing in a certain style is a success! Grindcore really sounds like grindcore, jazz really sounds like jazz and thrash really sounds like thrash. Moreover, there is enough weirdness in the arrangements here, that we can easily speak of a completely unique style. On Mr. Bungle albums for example, the music never became heavy enough to recreate the power of a real metal unit. On the other hand, 'The Director's Cut' is indeed a very heavy album and is bound to satisfy even the fans of the most brutal music (seriously!).

So what else is there left to say? If you can find it (as it seems to be a bit rare), BUY IT! This is one of those metal albums that make me believe that heavy music is still a genre that has something new and fresh to offer. If you are fed up of the fact that most new power metal, death metal and black metal albums sound exactly the same, this is an album for you.

(originally written in June 2002)