A Shirt on Sunday: Fantômas Melvins Big Band - 01/05/06 – Forum, Kentish Town

This is the least listenable gig I’ve ever been to. In a good way.

Fantômas were what Mike Patton did after Faith No More split up in the late 80s. They make FNM sound like Abba. The band is Patton keyboards, effects and screaming, Buzz Osbourne of The Melvins on guitar, Trevor Dunn on bass and original Slayer drummer, Dave Lomabardo. The first album was a soundtrack to an Italian comic (whence ‘Fantômas’), the second was mutated film themes, third a soundtrack to an imaginary 45-minute surgery and the fourth a series of Warner Brothers cartoon-style chunks of music about a minute long. I can live without the soundtrack themes, but the other three albums are incredible.

Meanwhile, The Melvins are one of the bands credited with inventing grunge music in the early 80s. I’m not a fan, so don’t have an opinion on this vexed question.

Predictably, the Big Band is all of ‘em on stage at once, doing stuff from both back catalogues and some other random stuff as well. They did a millennium new-year gig and then in 2006 reformed for a European tour.

On the night, there were three bands (I forget the first). Dälek are industrial hip-hop. Sort of like rapping over Nine-Inch Nails tunes. I enjoyed them enough to buy a CD on the night, but it doesn’t get played very often.

My memories of the big band are limited. They did too much Melvins material for me to get into the gig, and there wasn't enough of the really bizarre stuff. too many songs and not enough 90” bursts of frantic drumming and screaming with stuttering guitar howling over the top.

I left at the end with a feeling of having witnessed something worth experiencing, if not strictly enjoyable. Three years later I saw Mike Patton working with bonkers guitar torturer Fred Frith. An hour of really enjoyable noise-making, but no t-shirt, or album or any other souvenir of the evening. So I thought I’d mention it here.

Incidentally, the white bits on the t-shirt glow under fluorescent light.

Videos

The night was released on DVD, so there's a lot from that on You Tube.

The Omen

One of the better known themes from The Director's Cut

Night Goat

This would be a Melvins tune, I think.

The Bit

Just prior to this the guitar player had snapped a string on his guitar and was playing with it (he's holding it as the clip starts). I wanted more of this sort of thing.