#grip inc

[metalcultbrigade]

Grip Inc. - Power of Inner Strength. 07/03/1995

[vinylspinning]

Fantômas: Suspended Animation (2005)

After celebrating their namesake comic book hero on album one, their favorite movie soundtracks on album two, and, uuuuh ... surgery without anesthesia on album three (!?), Fantômas decided to create their own brand of twisted cartoon music for album four: Suspended Animation.

And you know that that means ... Looney Tunes on crack!

Those of you wishing to save five minutes of your time can take that simplified summary to the bank, but read on if you'd like to learn more about how experimentally-minded metal-heads ("experimetal"?), Mike Patton, Buzz Osborne, Dave Lombardo, and Trevor Dunn went about this peculiar task.

Mind you, unlike '01's Director's Cut, where they simply put the freak on well-known soundtrack themes, here, Fantômas crafted their own wacky material out of the TV cartoon medium's best-loved sonic devices -- e.g. comical classical snippets, familiar children's lullabies, slapstick percussion instruments (kazoos, rattles, etc.), and basically anything else that goes "pop!," "bang!," "slap!," etc.

Sprinkled (or should I say "slammed") amidst all this were frantic Buzz riffs, blistering Lombardo rhythms, dissonant electronics, and a vast array of super-human Patton vocal acrobatics: singing, shouting, shrieking, whispering, scatting, and utterances for which we've yet to find names for.

Obviously, this is why many people have described Fantômas as "dada metal" over the years, but just plain "dada" would also do, given their constant interjection of random sound effects: laser guns, video game blips, busy dial tones, even an opera singer!

Just what the 30 days of April, 2005 did to deserve being associated with Suspended Animation's 30, uniformly brief vignettes (averaging 90 seconds), is beyond me, but Fantômas related each one to a particular day's holiday, be that familiar or obscure, for example:

April Fool's Day, obviously (April 1st)

Don't Go to Work Unless it's Fun Day (April 3rd)

No Housework Day (April 7th)

Day of the Amazon Goddess (April 9th)

Eight Track Tape Day (April 11th)

Blame Somebody Else Day (April 13th)

"Blah Blah Blah" Day (April 17th)

National Puppetry Day (April 20th)

Babylonian Feast of Ishtar (April 22nd)

Cuckoo Day (April 25th)

Romania's Floralia Festival ... and my 35th birthday (April 28th)

Finally, visually, the band didn't turn to Disney or Hannah & Barbera for cartoon inspiration, but rather contemporary Japanese pop artist Yoshitomo Nara, who illustrated an entire calendar's worth of scenarios with simultaneously innocent and evil childlike characters.

This calendar was already included in limited edition pressings of the 2005 Suspended Animation CD, but Ipepac's 2024 vinyl reissue took things to another level with a stunning (if technically useless) full-sized calendar for April, 2005.

In sum: whether you have the stomach for Fantômas' wild musical concepts or not, you've gotta hand it to them for never doing anything by half measures.

More Mike Patton: Tomahawk’s Tomahawk, Oddfellows; Faith No More’s We Care a Lot, Introduce Yourself, The Real Thing, Live at the Brixton Academy, King for a Day … Fool for a Lifetime, Album of the Year, Sol Invictus.

[musicmags]

[corpse-drummer]

Grip Inc. - Rusty Nail

From album: Nemesis

[metalsongoftheday]

Wednesday, October 5: Despair, “Freedom Now”

Despair turned out to be an unusual farm team: drummer Markus Freiwald eventually joined Sodom, and guitarist Waldemar Sorychta would not only end up forming and joining a ton of bands, including the mighty Grip Inc. with Dave Lombardo, but garner significant acclaim and success as a producer, while frontman Robert Kampf’s primary claim to notoriety was founding Century Media.  As it happened, History of Hate was one of the label’s first releases, and the only Despair record Kampf sang on.  Nonetheless, “Freedom Now” was indicative of both the band’s and label’s output at the time: Sorychta’s riffing and Freiwald’s drumming were beyond frantic, while Kampf shouted lyrics that were likely meant to be politically charged, but actually didn’t make a ton of sense.  The song was thrash taken to its technical extreme, with Sorychta in particular stuffing in more notes than any American thrash guitarist would even consider. “Freedom Now” was certainly intense, and remains every bit as relentless as anything released in the last 5 years, but this sort of sound couldn’t sustain itself, and ultimately didn’t, as Despair managed only two more records before disbanding and spreading out to much greener pastures.

[dailymetalsong]

Grip Inc. - Skin Trade - Incorporated - 2004

An overlooked album of this underrated band. It has some of their heaviest, most thrashy songs. Like 'Skin Trade' in which Dave Lombardo goes full speed, while Waldemar Sorychta's melodic guitar play seems to float on top of it.

[metalmessiahmark]

[metalmessiahmark]