FANTÔMAS

Patton's gibbering is serviceable and as octave-leapingly manic as ever while the band is experienced and precise (and actually quite star-studded, even exciting if you're a Melvins fan like this reviewer!) but the music itself is raw and monotone - plenty of the "songs" include one-note riffs (and not in the good Frippian way) or else are displays of off-kilter structure with no real intelligent content. Of course, the music is only half the story, apparently serving as the mood track for a short comic novel - but approaching the music on its own I find it to be one-dimensional, and if there's a brief, visceral thrill to their music, for me it was only initial and turned out to be surprise over the audacity of the release itself, being a debut. To me, this album's greatest achievement is in stirring up a very creepy atmosphere and should be taken as one large, thrashy noise-scape.

Although I find most of "Amenaza al Mundo"'s content to be fairly uninspired, the two longest tracks are happy exceptions and feel like important blueprints for "Delirium Cordia" - the album I find to be the current jewel in the Fantômas crown. But hey, Mr. Bungle's demos and debut weren't all that good either, and let's not forget what they blossomed into afterwards!

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