Halloween is almost here, so Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records has one more strange treat for fans of experimental metal and classic horror soundtracks. They have temporarily uploaded Fantômas’ The Director’s Cut Live: A New Year’s Revolution to YouTube, giving viewers a chance to watch the band tear through its cinematic covers album in full. There is a catch, though. The performance will only be available until November 1.
The label announced the limited-time release on social media, encouraging fans to watch the concert through its YouTube channel before it disappears. The announcement also links to a dedicated page for the video, making this a short window for anyone who has never seen the performance or wants to revisit one of Fantômas’ more unusual live projects.
The concert was filmed on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2008, at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Released on DVD in September 2011, The Director’s Cut Live: A New Year’s Revolution captures Fantômas performing the entirety of its second studio album, The Director’s Cut, alongside additional covers. The video runs approximately 55 minutes, although the original DVD package also included bonus material.
Fantômas is the experimental supergroup led by Mike Patton, best known for his work with Faith No More and Mr. Bungle. The lineup for this concert features Patton on vocals, Buzz Osborne of the Melvins on guitar, Trevor Dunn on bass, and Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. The live lineup differs from the one on the original The Director’s Cut album, which featured Dave Lombardo on drums.
Fantômas Turns Classic Horror Themes Into Experimental Metal
Released in 2001, The Director’s Cut takes familiar film and television music and pushes it through Fantômas’ unpredictable musical machinery. The album contains 16 reinterpretations of themes associated with movies and television, with horror and suspense providing much of its inspiration.
The track list includes Jerry Goldsmith’s ominous “Ave Satani” from The Omen, music from Rosemary’s Baby, and material connected to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Fantômas also takes on themes from The Godfather, Cape Fear, and Der Golem, turning recognizable compositions into jagged, heavy arrangements that rarely behave like straightforward cover songs.
The live performance brings those arrangements to the stage, where the band’s tightly coordinated playing meets Patton’s unconventional vocal work. The accompanying video adds to the unsettling atmosphere with distorted imagery, ghostly projections, and visual effects that warp the musicians’ faces into nightmarish shapes. It feels less like a conventional concert film and more like a collection of horror-score experiments performed in front of an audience.
For fans of Patton’s work, the performance offers a chance to see Fantômas tackling material that sits somewhere between soundtrack tribute and musical deconstruction. For horror fans, it is also a curious look at how familiar themes can become something far stranger when stripped of their original cinematic context.
Watch The Director’s Cut Live Before November 1
The full concert is available through Ipecac Recordings’ YouTube link, but the label says the upload will only remain live until November 1. Anyone interested in seeing the complete performance should watch it before the Halloween window closes.
The timing makes sense for a record built around some of cinema’s most unsettling music. Fantômas has spent years finding unusual ways to approach familiar material, and The Director’s Cut Live: A New Year’s Revolution gives those ideas a suitably strange visual counterpart. It is not an ordinary Halloween playlist, but that is precisely the point.
