Thursday, June 16, 2005
Fantomas, The Village Dublin, 15/06/05
Two gigs in two nights, my new flatmates think this is standard for me but sadly it's not true, which is perhaps for the best as I don't think I was quite recovered from Slayer the previous night and was unable to move my neck in any vertical planes.
The venue, The Village, is a bit disappointing, it's too long and narrow making it difficult to see anything in the sold out venue, and it was too damn warm. I managed to find a pillar to lean on, but I'm sure said pillar only made seeing the bad difficult for those unfortunates at the back. Despite the lack of support band the crowd is still keen to find a good vantage point for the gig, simply because of the presence of Terry Bozzios's drum kit, which has an impressive 24 cymbals. This man is clearly going to fill the place of Dave Lombardo, this is a man who drummed for Zappa and who'd presence is well noted on the Baby Snakes movie. This sends people fighting to stage left, but this comes at a sacrifice, for anybody having seen Mike Patton before will know that in order to truly get what he is doing, you need to be able to see him, and in The Village this is difficult due to the low stage.
That man in a wizard, the Fantomas sound comes across so heavy and metallic on record, but live it is based on Pattons work with samples, tape loops, keyboads and other electronic items. This clash of sounds is what makes Fantomas great,where on paper metal / grunge / jazz / electronica sounds iconoclastic in the extreme, live it works, hence this is my second time seeing Fantomas just to make sure it wasn't a fluke last time. Fantomas where also the perfect way for Patton to cast of the Faith No More legacy, his slide from singer to animal noises is as unusual decline that the only comparison is an actual guitarist deciding to take up bass.
Song wise, it's hard to note what happened as it all happened so fast and I've not heard a Fantomas record since 2001. I did note some work from The Directors Cut however, most notably The Omen Theme, along with Terror Lake and Rosemarys Baby. We also get a damn good encore, for all of 50 seconds.
My favorite moment was the mandatory Mike Patton winding up the crowd, this time choosing to slag off U2, which doesn't go down as well as you would have though. "You're angry at me?" Patton retorts, "But they're your fault!", but he does go onto accept responsibility for causing Fred Durst, which is big of him.
In all it was a damn good night, so different yet still accessible, making time fly by and worth the 20 Euro ticket price. Go see them next change you get.
Starting to like going to gigs without a camera, but seeing that there are about 30 digital cameras and phones in the crowd I imagine the images are out there somewhere, and probably better than the ones I would have taken anyway.
The venue, The Village, is a bit disappointing, it's too long and narrow making it difficult to see anything in the sold out venue, and it was too damn warm. I managed to find a pillar to lean on, but I'm sure said pillar only made seeing the bad difficult for those unfortunates at the back. Despite the lack of support band the crowd is still keen to find a good vantage point for the gig, simply because of the presence of Terry Bozzios's drum kit, which has an impressive 24 cymbals. This man is clearly going to fill the place of Dave Lombardo, this is a man who drummed for Zappa and who'd presence is well noted on the Baby Snakes movie. This sends people fighting to stage left, but this comes at a sacrifice, for anybody having seen Mike Patton before will know that in order to truly get what he is doing, you need to be able to see him, and in The Village this is difficult due to the low stage.
That man in a wizard, the Fantomas sound comes across so heavy and metallic on record, but live it is based on Pattons work with samples, tape loops, keyboads and other electronic items. This clash of sounds is what makes Fantomas great,where on paper metal / grunge / jazz / electronica sounds iconoclastic in the extreme, live it works, hence this is my second time seeing Fantomas just to make sure it wasn't a fluke last time. Fantomas where also the perfect way for Patton to cast of the Faith No More legacy, his slide from singer to animal noises is as unusual decline that the only comparison is an actual guitarist deciding to take up bass.
Song wise, it's hard to note what happened as it all happened so fast and I've not heard a Fantomas record since 2001. I did note some work from The Directors Cut however, most notably The Omen Theme, along with Terror Lake and Rosemarys Baby. We also get a damn good encore, for all of 50 seconds.
My favorite moment was the mandatory Mike Patton winding up the crowd, this time choosing to slag off U2, which doesn't go down as well as you would have though. "You're angry at me?" Patton retorts, "But they're your fault!", but he does go onto accept responsibility for causing Fred Durst, which is big of him.
In all it was a damn good night, so different yet still accessible, making time fly by and worth the 20 Euro ticket price. Go see them next change you get.
Starting to like going to gigs without a camera, but seeing that there are about 30 digital cameras and phones in the crowd I imagine the images are out there somewhere, and probably better than the ones I would have taken anyway.
