Dave Chamberlain

The smart-metal supergroup Fantomas, made up of Mike Patton, Buzz Osbourne, Dave Lombardo and Trevor Dunn, has made a cartoon out of its scattered, intense and often brutal sound. Literally. "Suspended Animation," the band's fifth full-length on Patton's Ipecac Recordings, is an homage to the quartet of composers who wrote the various Warner Brothers soundtracks, and if you think a collection of intelligent metal guys can't cut this off and eat it, you're wrong. Coming in at just a little more than forty minutes and with song titles that enumerate the month of April ("4/01/05," "4/02/05"), Patton and the boys unleash a predictably diverse symphony of chaos. Through ambient, speed metal, free-jazz and just plain messed-up tracks, Fantomas creates the twenty-first-century soundtrack to the mayhem caused in an average "Road Runner" episode, and leaves the listener both exhausted and, occasionally, laughing. Drummer Lombardo (Slayer) leads the action, but Patton's tortured screams and background antics (which you can almost see) help create an unsettling, internal picture. This might not be Fantomas' opus, but it's pretty cool all the same.

Fantomas plays with the equally as jarring Locust, April 19 at the Metro, 3730 North Clark, (774)549-0203. (2005-04-12)

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