FANTOMAS | Delìrium Còrdia released 14 years ago!

Fantômas' third album was released on January 27th 2004 via Ipecac.

"Like the surgeon, the composer slashes open the body of his fellow man, removes his eyes, empties his abdomen of organs, hangs him up on a hook holding up to the light all of the body's palpitating treasures sending a burst of light into its innermost depths."  - Richard Selzer MD

Composed by Mike Patton this record consists of one 74 minute track and  could be likened to a horror movie soundtrack. The theme of the record is Surgical Sound Specimens from the Museum of Skin or surgery without anesthesia. 


'The record is always haunting; giving one a sense of the grizzly images of the insert booklet -- photos of surgeries in action. The music has film score qualities, a feeling of being lost in a hospital at night, a hospital much like that of Lars Von Trier's The Kingdom, while Hellraiser demons watch and wait from afar.' - allmusic
'This album is their own score for something more powerful than a scary movie: the sick, twisted dreams that emerge from your own subconscious when you’re asleep.' - PopMatters

'Imagine being in hospital. Imagine going through major surgery while being awake; feeling surgeons dig into your body, scraping away impediments, while all the while you're lying helplessly awake, screaming inwardly for some sort of release from emotions of pain, fear, and abject terror. Now, imagine this idea set to music.' - Sputnik

 'Delirium Cordia is the perfect amalgamation of a soundtrack to a suspense-thriller and a surgical procedure gone horrifically wrong. The world of a surgeon with dementia has never been expressed so simply' - Screen Point Blank

All the images used to comprise the cover are photographs taken from Max Aguilera-Hellweg's book The Sacred Heart: An Atlas of the Body Seen Through Invasive Surgery, published in 1997. The actual design of the album sleeve by Patton and regular artistic collaborator Martin Kvamme.

'An accident cost professional photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg the use of his right arm for a year. Forced to work with a tripod and the larger format of 4-by-5-inch film, he was providentially assigned to photograph a neurosurgeon as she worked. This ultimately gave birth to The Sacred Heart, a magnificent and utterly disturbing collection of photographs of the human body seen through invasive surgery.
There is nothing like this collection either in the annals of medical photography or the arts. Almost 50 surgical procedures--a liver transplant, a mastectomy, the harvesting of organs after death, a cesarean birth, and others--cause us to look away and immediately look back. Surgeons' hands hover gracefully over gaping wounds, and lighting on gloves, instruments, and bare flesh is both theatrical and holy.

'Aguilera-Hellweg's essay integrates the photographs and historic information about early surgical procedures with his own philosophic musings. The Sacred Heart inspires terror, pity, and awe as our gaze lingers on these horrific images.' - Editorial Review