Der Golem

Mike Patton grew up in Eureka, California going to the movies alone. His parents dropped him off at the theater. He gravitated toward slasher films. Years later he said his early cinema experiences were more auditory than visual. The soundtrack came before the image. Anton Karas playing zither on The Third Man was the kind of thing that stayed with him. Music becoming a character. By 1998 he had the band he needed. Buzz Osborne of the Melvins on guitar. Trevor Dunn from Mr. Bungle on bass. Dave Lombardo of Slayer on drums. They named the project Fantômas after a French pulp criminal who had appeared in a series of crime novels before the First World War and then in a cycle of 1960s French cinema. Four musicians with no reason to share a room, executing the thing Patton had been hearing in his head for years.

Every note on The Director’s Cut had been worked out before the band entered the studio. Patton built the demos at home. Complete. Every note in place. He had spent years absorbing the composers of horror and noir film. Nino Rota. Bernard Herrmann. Ennio Morricone. Henry Mancini. Each one was going to be taken apart and reassembled as something else. The album was recorded in January 2001 and released on Ipecac Recordings, the label Patton co-founded with Greg Werckman. Not a covers album in any conventional sense. Patton knew there was a very thin line when you interpret someone else’s music. On some tracks he pushed harder. On others he pulled back. No videos were ever commissioned for any of it. The music already had enough information in it. Borderline overkill were his words.

The track is named for the film and the film is named for the legend. Der Golem is the 1920 German expressionist silent film directed by Paul Wegener. It draws on the Jewish legend of the Golem of Prague. A rabbi creates a creature from clay and breathes life into it to protect the Jewish ghetto from persecution. Wegener had made two earlier versions of the Golem story before this one. The 1920 film became a foundational work of horror cinema. Its imagery informed the genre for decades. Fantômas placed it second in the running order on The Director’s Cut, right after the Godfather opener. Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Released July 9, 2001. The Golem had been dormant for over a century. Fantômas woke it up.