1287. Faith No More / King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime. 1995. 3.5/5

Faith No More had been on a roller coaster ride since the unexpected and overwhelming success of their album “The Real Thing” when it was released in 1989. The acquisition of Mike Patton as lead singer had been a major part of that climb out of obscurity, with his amazing vocals and stage antics creating a focal point for the band and offering a real dynamic between all band members. Backing this up was always going to be a tricky proposition, and the “Angel Dust” album managed to split the fan base when it was released in 1992, as the music followed a less commercial direction than much of the new fanbase that they had gathered from that previous album would have expected. Instead it went out in a crazed alternative landscape that made its own extension from grunge music that had taken the world by storm at that point in time, and in its own way contributed to the offshoots that came over the next three years with the diversifying of the music conglomerate of the mid-1990's.
Faith No More faced a number of problems as they headed towards where they wanted to drive when it came to their next album. Number one of those was the fate of guitarist Jim Martin, who had major problems with the direction the music was heading with the band. Martin stated on his website that he felt that “The Real Thing” was the band’s ideal album, both in the creative process and the subsequent touring, and that the change in musical style, and in focus from guitars to vocals with the arrival of Mike Patton, did not sit well with him. There had even been questions raised as to whether Martin had played on “Angel Dust”, to which bass guitarist Billy Gould said in an interview on PopMatters in October 2016, “He played, but the writing process was extremely difficult because he wasn't really much of a fan of the music. He wasn't really behind it. He wasn't really into it. So it was a tough process. I mean, I think, really, we realized that he wasn't going to continue while we were making that record because he was just on a different musical page."
Martin was eventually fired by fax from keyboardist Roddy Bottom in November 1993. In his place the band brought in Patton’s Mr. Bungle bandmate Trey Spruance to record guitars on the new album. This also turned into a story after the album was completed when Spruance left the band and was replaced for the subsequent tour by Bottom’s keyboard roadie, Dean Menta. Both sides tell a different story. The band claim Spruance was unwilling to commit to a long touring schedule, and Gould himself labelled him a “spoilt rich kid who did not want to tour”. On the other hand, Spruance recalled not even having enough money to buy the magazine where Gould said this about him. He remembered, "this is like one of those stunning juxtapositions in life when you're standing in fucking Tower Records and this thing goes out to the whole world that you're this spoilt, privileged rich kid, and you can't even buy the fucking magazine it's written in. That was really almost like a cosmic moment."
Adding to this, Roddy Bottum himself was mostly absent through all of the writing and recording process, due to the passing of his father and also that of Kurt Cobain. Bottum was a close friend of Courtney Love and Cobain’s death had hit him hard. He also had developed a heroin addiction, which eventually led to a band intervention over the matter. As a result, the album was composed with almost no keyboards in the mix.
So as you can see, there was a little bit going on.
Writing the album took up to nine months, which included the search for a replacement for Martin, while the recording took another three months on top of that. In a 1995 Australian radio interview, drummer Mike Bordin felt more focused than “Angel Dust”, and that the departure of previous guitarist Jim Martin made the writing process easier. Gould was also quoted at the time, "we've never written stuff with Jim, as a band. Usually we'd give him a tape and he'd put stuff to it because he didn't like practicing with us much." Gould added in another interview, "it's heavier, it's more direct and it's the first record where we had the guitar the way we wanted it. Now it feels we're a dog who's been let of the leash."
It was a long and delayed time period, but eventually Faith No More had their new album completed, released to the world in March of 1995 under the ironic title of “King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime”.

There always felt like there would be a difference in the sounds produced on this album without Jim Martin there to offer his distinctive guitar riffs. The recruitment of another Mr. Bungle member did tip the balance in the possibility that the music on this album could slide more in that direction now that Martin had gone. Overall that isn’t the case, and although the band made it clear that Martin had not contributed much to the writing cause in recent times, it is noticeable here the directional change that the band has made now that he was out of the equation all together. And there is a whole component here that marks the changes afoot for Faith No More the band. Indeed, the songs here are equally split between what they had traditionally produced, and a different more progressive charting for the future.
The opening salvo of “Get Out” is from the old school, written by Mike Patton and featuring his genuine typical vocal performance and the hard riff and drum beat that mark the best songs from the band. This bleeds into “Ricochet” which develops the same vibes but with a slightly deviated energy from what the band and Patton has provided prior to this album. Indeed, it can be seen to be a more mature offering of the Faith No More core sound led by Patton’s vocals that are the main reference pint of the song.
Then comes “Evidence”, and this is where the ‘evidence’ of a change in the Faith No More template can first be found. This is a song heavily in depth of soul and R&B influences, with the heavily funked tones of both guitar bass being the overriding dominating factors of the track. This is the first of several songs on the album in which you can see the band playing in a small smoky jazz club dressed in suits and playing underneath the sounds of constant chatter from the assorted crowd at tables drinking champagne. It is a huge change, one that takes time to get used to.
Out of this quiet and introspective style than comes to return of the harder more belligerent more typical Faith No More attack in “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”. It still oscillates throughout the song from the quiet lyrics over Bottom’s bass before bursting into the hard-core vocals style driven by Spruance’s guitars and Bordin’s drums. This is the kind of song that drew in the long-time fans and is still a fan favourite to this day because of the energy and passion that explodes out of the song. There is then a reversion with “Star AD” which continues in the theme of a lounge club song, the soul inspired track that also implements a brass section to enhance the feel of the track, and Patton using his deeper lower key vocals to bring that feel and emotion to the track. “Cuckoo for Caca” is a sister track to “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” in the way Patton’s almost deranged vocals take over and dominate the track, with the music and mix of the almost unwritable riffs from bass, keys and guitar meshing together still being brought together as the band often did in their earliest form. “Caralho Voader” throws in a Brazilian theme into the mix, again moving to the jazz club scenario for the music inspiration for the track, whereas “Ugly in the Morning” returns to the themes of “Cuckoo for Caca” with Patton’s completely over the top screaming dominating over the meshing of styles musically once again. It seems likely that the changes in style of songs from track to track was a deliberate decision from the band and producer, but personal preference would be something that would determine if this was a wise move.
The first single released from the album comes next with “Digging the Grave”, which combines the marketability of Faith No More’s previous guise of short sharp song dominated musically by Bordin’s drums in the foreground, the keys lower in the mix and the bass on top of that, and Patton’s vocal destruction also making the guitar superfluous. He hits the energy button on this song and is the driving force and man out front. From here we have the typical change of style again with “Take This Bottle”, which slows everything down like a slow motion replay, or more accurately like playing a 45rpm record at 33rpm. That’s how it feels and sounds. It plays like a slug crawling across the turntable and Patton’s vocals sound as if they have been drawn out into eternity as the whole song winds down rather than winding up at any point in time. It almost has a country twang to it as well, though the piano keyboard and synth background don’t quite make that mix well either. Then the title track “King for a Day” has mirrored similarities in sections to the opening strains of the album, with Bottom’s atmospheric keys through the song giving it an uplifting, almost building crescendo through from the middle of the track to its conclusion. The song does build that way, with Patton’s vocals in the middle in the quieter lower key that then follow the lead of the music to become harder and more definitive. This acts as the epic track of the album, with the rises and falls of platitudes of the music, and the strength throughout making it one of the highlights along with its progressive feel. “What a Day” cries out with intensity and energy, driven by Billy Gould’s thumping funky bass guitar, and Patton goes hard lyrically and vocally again. Due to Gould’s bass this really brings back parallels to the early Faith No More albums.
“The Last to Know” continues the bands push towards a progressive nature in some of the material hear, with a softer rhythm tone dominated by the synth, before an understated guitar solo from Spruance takes the song out to its conclusion. There is no outward variation in vocals, simply a slow build that remains contained within the framework of the song. It is a new direction for the band, highlighting the different tones being employed here on this album. This continues into the album closer, “Just a Man”, an extension of what we have just heard, apart from the passionate reselling of the chorus by Patton along with choir backing vocals. These two songs in particular show what could be said to be the growing maturity of the band musically. This is another song that feels as though it is being performed in a club by the band dressed in suits rather than by the hard rock funk band they had come to prominence as. Even though they had moments of that old style on this album, these closing tracks seem to be painting a different future for the band, one where they change their clothes and personalities completely.

This album was released in what for me was the great big black hole of 1995, a year that should I ever get the chance to go back and erase I would do in an instant. And there were not a lot of albums that I went out and purchased during this year, but this was one of them. I can assure you I didn’t really know what to expect given the stylistic differences between the previous four albums the band had released, and on first listens I remember that it didn’t really grab me. I could identify the songs that did catch my attention straight away and also the ones that didn’t. What did give this album a boost was the fact that two weeks after its release, Faith No More was one of the headline acts at the first (and unfortunately only) Alternative Nation music festival at Eastern Creek west of Sydney. During this show they played several songs off this album, being “Get Out”, “Digging the Grave”, “Evidence”, “What a Day”, “King for a Day” and “Ricochet”. And I remember the crowd being most subdued during them, because the album itself had been out for only two weeks. Still, for me who had at least heard them, it inspired me to give the album more of a go than I perhaps would have without that festival.
What it is fair to say is that at the time it was released, I was putting it on as background music to what was occurring in my life at the time. There were dead spots on this album that I noticed but probably didn’t process overly much at the time. I know when listening to the CD on my stereo the skip button on the remote would get used at times, and the fast forward button on the tape player in my car as well. But this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the album obviously, because when discussing the album over the years I remember I have talked it up as being ‘not as good as “Angel Dust’ and ‘The Real Thing’, but still pretty good!”
So we come to the present day, and over the last week I have listened to this album again a dozen times, sometimes in the background at work but then also with a discerning ear for the review for this episode. And it has probably confirmed my suspicions that I think have hovered in the back of my mind since I first bought this album. And those thoughts are that basically, this is an album of two parts and almost two different eras of the band, put together in an order to make you think that it isn’t. On a recent episode for Billy Joel’s album “Glass Houses”, I mentioned how all of the known and popular songs are on the first side of the album, and the lesser known tracks are left to fight for themselves on the B side. In the instance of this album, the band and producer have obviously decided to mix the two different styled tracks in with each other, in the hope that fans who prefer only one of those styles – either the hard heavy and funky style of their previous releases, or the more introspective jazz club style or progressive style of the other tracks here – would not notice, and come to love the album as a whole. Now I’m sure that for many fans, this DID come to pass, and they fell in love with the album as a whole, with the full package of differing song styles that abound here. Certainly in Australia the album went to #2 on the charts and #5 in the UK which would suggest it succeeded. But in the US it could manage only #31 which suggests it missed the mark there.
The end result for me then is that it is an album that I seem to have enjoyed more in the past than I do now. This probably came into clearer view once the bands next album, “Album of the Year” was released. There are still some great songs here. I adore “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” and “Digging the Grave” and enjoy most other songs, but there is the occasional hiccup here where momentum hits a brick wall that makes parts of the album difficult to focus on. Despite this, of Faith No More’s seven studio albums I rank this as #3, though it is a close run thing. If only they could have reconciled with Jim Martin...

1253. Faith No More / The Real Thing. 1989. 5/5

Back in 1987 Faith No More had released their second studio album titled “Introduce Yourself”, the episode of which you can find in Season 2 of this podcast. It contained the song “We Care a Lot” which became a minor hit at the time and allowed the band an increased profile with which to tour places that to that time they had been unable to reach. However, during a tour of Europe through 1988, there were a number of incidents involving lead vocalist Chuck Mosley that caused disruption in the band, both on stage and off. At the release party for the album, Mosley fell asleep on stage as the band was being interviewed promoting the release. Then he allegedly (both parties have different versions of the event) punched bass guitarist Billy Gould on stage, and at one stage one of his roadies got into a fistfight with guitarist Jim Martin. All of this came to a head once the band had returned home from that European tour. Billy Gould, in a story published in Classic Rock in 2014, was quoted as saying, “There was a certain point when I went to rehearsal, and Chuck wanted to do all acoustic guitar songs. It was just so far off the mark. The upshot was that I got up, walked out and quit the band. Just said: ‘I’m done – I can’t take this any longer. It’s just so ridiculous’. The same day, I talked to Bordin, and he said: ‘Well, I still want to play with you’. Bottum did the same thing. It was another one of these ‘firing somebody without firing them’ scenarios”. It was similar to the same way the band had moved on from another former member some years earlier. If it works once, surely it will work again. And Chuck Mosley, just like that, was out.
In his place, the band hired Mike Patton, who at the time was singing with his high school band, Mr. Bungle. Jim Martin had heard their demo tape and urged the band to at least audition Patton for the role. When Patton came to the band, the music for the new album had pretty much already been completed and recorded. According to producer Mike Wallace, when Patton came in, he would occasionally ask if a piece could be extended, or changed, and he was summarily told “No, this is it, it’s done, so you’ll have to do it this way”. And then he went and wrote the lyrics for the entire album in a 10-12 day period, at the age of 21, having to fit the contours that had already been decided. An amazing feat, and to then sing them in the way he did, to help create what was this album “The Real Thing”, is quite an accomplishment.

For so many fans, this album was the first that they had experienced the band, and what better way to be introduced to Faith No More than the barnstorming opening track “From Out of Nowhere”, which blazes out of the speakers without warning and trips the album into overdrive from the outset. Energetic and browbeaten from the start, it is a killer opening, and surely impressed the fans who knew the first two albums with the onus on the new lead vocalist.
Everybody on the single’s release knew “Epic”, a song particularly well named for the way it sounded and the way it was treated on release. The video is mayhemic, and indeed created some controversy because of the vision of a fish out of water, flapping madly to breathe. But it was the manic energy of the track both on screen and on vinyl and CD that made it so popular, that drove the sales of the album because it funnelled the popularity of the single into people wanting to dive into the album itself and find out what else they could find. Surely no one left disappointed.
“Falling to Pieces” was also released as a single and is perhaps the most mainstream song that the band performs on this album. It is followed by the amazing “Surprise! You’re Dead!” which apart from being incredible musically must have been ridiculously difficult to write lyrics to fit to the music the band had written. In the end, it is triumphant. It was written by Jim Martin in a previous band Agents of Misfortune, which had also had Cliff Burton on bass guitar.
If nothing else, on this album you get the full burst of what Faith No More was so good at – songs that could be calm and pretty and almost beautiful in musical output, and then descending into the heaviest and hardest change up, without creating a song that you can’t listen to. The composition may sound strange in explanation, but when you actually hear the output, especially on the amazing “Zombie Eaters”, which defies the normal characteristics of what goes in to composing a song, you know how well it works. “Zombie Eaters” is a triumph, an amazing progression from the sublime to the subliminal. The title track “The Real Thing” is in a similar style but without the same range of difference of the previous track. These two songs especially stand out because of the way they are almost a hybrid of sounds and vocal styles that shouldn’t mesh together, and yet with this band do so as if it is just the normal thing to do. Both of these tracks are undeniably brilliant.
The back third of the album mixes up what has come before and offers another dimension to the band’s music. “Underwater Love” and “The Morning After” retain a less manic and more uniform song structure than what has come before, with just as much enjoyment from the band’s efforts. “Woodpecker from Mars” is an instrumental, and a terrific one, but I do wonder if Patton just ran out of ideas for lyrics, or found it too hard to find a way to incorporate them into the music the band had recorded. It would have been a difficult task, that’s for sure. The cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” is amazing, although Patton has always shown a lot of ambivalence for it. Indeed, when singing it live on that tour, he often was unable to show enough interest to sing the lyrics correctly on occasions. The album concludes with the much more serene “Edge of the World”, a style of song the band would drift back to down the track
The band itself is so perfectly represented on this album, that everyone who was a fan or not could discern exactly how wonderful each musician in the band is, because each of their instruments are all powerfully audible in the mix of each track. The brilliant funk bass sound from Billy Gould is so prominent throughout, and indeed alongside Mike Bordin’s perfectly attuned rum style is perhaps the driving force of the band as a result. Sometimes these two instruments become just the background of a band on an album, holding time, but not much else, not given the stage they deserve. That’s definitely not the case here on “The Real Thing”, as both the bass and drums are in your face on every song. Matt Wallace can take a massive bow for his production here, it is superb. Then there is Roddy Bottum and his keyboards, whose expression on every song is so important, and are so intrinsic to the song without sounding like they are just filling a gap between the other instruments. As one of the main song writers alongside Gould, Roddy helps compose the tracks so that each instrument is prolific, including his own, and that is not an easy thing to do for the keyboards, which in other bands can dominate without a purpose. On “The Real Thing”, they complement throughout while still being able to be a major part of each song. And Jim Martin on guitar brings the heavier side to the band, sticking his landing perfectly every time he is asked to punctuate the song with his trademark riffing.
The vocal performance by Mike Patton on this album is one of the most remarkable, and perhaps one of the most outstanding performances in the history of music. The way he is able to sing in every possible genre of music ever, sometimes all in the same track, is quite incredible. The more you listen to the album the more you can understand just what an amazing performance it is. He hits notes in a normal sounding vocal line but can hit the same note again in a soaring melodic voice and then also in a raging metal scream. It is out of this world, and in a way he never did again on a Faith No More album. Everything following this album was different again, and no less spectacular, but definitely in a different category than what he does on this album. Most likely, that was deliberate. Patton is nothing if not an individual who does not like being pigeonholed into one persona.

My first memory of this album was on the release of “Epic” as the single, and the video that promoted it, which was a good six months after the album was released. I didn’t hear the album until the friends that I was in a band with at that time actually played it one afternoon after band practice, and then began suggesting we should play songs off it. I did buy the CD sometime after that (because the cover of “War Pigs” only appeared as a bonus track on the CD and not the vinyl), and once I had digested it all I became hooked. Our band did eventually play some of the songs off this album. We first had a crack at “Epic” for our first ever gig, at our mates 21st birthday party in the back half of 1990, an interesting experience given that we had practiced it twice, and we only played it because a number of people actually requested it that night. Yeah ok, it was awful, but the drunk attendees loved it. It was NOT as awful as the version of “From Out of Nowhere” we played at Jamberoo Pub about six months later, which was truly diabolical. However, we then played “Surprise! You’re Dead!” at another gig about six months after that, and it was a triumph, at least according to the crowd in attendance. It was fun as well. There is nothing easy about playing Faith No More songs, I can tell you from experience. It probably would have helped if we had practiced those first two songs more than we did as well.
1990 was a pretty hectic year in heavy music, but this album held its own throughout the listening year for me. The unique combination of song composition, brilliant musicians and amazing vocals was more than enough to keep interest in this album and band for years to come. And it was one of those rare albums that crossed genres, that was able to be enjoyed and even loved by people of vastly different music tastes. On the tour of Australia to promote this album, the band played amazing smaller venues like The Venue at Dee Why, The Cobra Club, the Revesby Roundhouse, the Marquee Nightclub, and the Sylvania Hotel, where I happened to see them with about 300 other people. It was just amazing to see such a band in such an intimate venue. On their next tour, there was no chance of that.
This album has been on my playlist for the last three weeks. I made mention on my episode on Nirvana’s “Bleach” album that another album had been overshadowing it completely. That was this album. The brightness of the songs, the ecstatic energy and stylistic brilliance of “The Real Thing” is a beacon, even today, over most albums. It’s a mood changer, one that still turns people’s heads whenever it comes on.
Faith No More of course continued on their merry way, but in a different form. The story goes that, having played most of this album on the tour that followed, given the lack of superior material on their other two albums, that by the end of the tour the band was well and truly tired and over playing the same style of songs every night. It led to them moving in a different musical direction by the time they came around to recording the follow up album, one that divided the opinion of the fans they had picked up from this album. But that story is for another episode.

865. Faith No More / Sol Invictus. 2015. 3/5

There is an inherent danger in getting over-excited about a band that you loved before they broke up, only to re-emerge some years later and announce that they are producing a new album. It's hard enough when you have a band you love still putting out albums every couple of years that never match your expectations of the two or three albums they produced 25 years ago that were 'legendary', so how do you prepare yourself for what is to come in the previously mentioned instance? With great trepidation is how.

Faith No More's final album before their break up 15 years ago, the brilliantly titled Album of the Year, was average. It had maybe three songs on it that I enjoyed, and the rest was just filler. It lacked all of the energy and passion of previous releases, and in many ways came across as an old man's release. their break up, while sad, to me came at the right time to avoid continuing in the same direction. Their reformation and touring again was to me a money spinner. When a new album was announced, I was cautious, hopeful and pessimistic of the result. Because I knew it wasn't going to be The Real Thing, or Angel Dust, or King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime.
Thus, having gone in with little expectation, I was not disappointed with the result once I heard it. It goes without saying that I was also not inspired and captivated either. The mellow opening of "Sol Invictus" sets the tone for what I believed was going to be another easy listening type of album, granted with that Faith No More styling. "Superhero" mashes up everything the band can throw at you, with Mike Patton's vocals transforming between his screaming best to chanting the same vocal line over and over again in his normal register, all the while having the keys and drums crashing on in no particular phrasing towards the back half of the song. I am just old now, or is this just a meshing together of noise in a vague semblance of a song? "Sunny Side Up" comes back in a more typical arrangement, much like songs from the end of their first marriage. "Separation Anxiety" Is the first song on the album that I can relate to with the band, with solid drum work from Mike Bordin, Mike Patton's vocals going from quiet to scream, and the guitars and keyboards crashing in appropriately and now sounding like the Faith No More of old. By far the best song on the album.
"Cone of Shame" again does the start-slow-and-quiet-to-rise-to-loud song structure, but without the hook and real drive of the previous song. "Rise of the Fall" stays far too much on the mellow side of the centre point to grab your attention. "Black Friday" delves into both halves of the band's psyche, the light and the black. The single "Motherfucker" tries to shock more in lyrical content than in musical direction. "Matador" in the same way feels almost too structured, with the same rhythm moving throughout the song, leaving Patton to sing in a form that creates few surprises. "From the Dead" is one of those latter day Faith No More songs, complete with backing melody vocals, that is a feel-good song, harmless and showcasing the saner side of Patton's vocals and the band as a whole. In other words - wow, where did this come from?! Yes, it's from the Commodores "Easy" side of the band's facade, and while many fans will enjoy it, it behoves me to say that I'm not one of them. Anyone who has followed Patton's career, especially recently with Tomahawk, know that he hasn't become any saner when it comes to song writing, but would be still surprised by a song like this.

Trying to describe how I feel about an album like this is difficult, because while a song such as "Separation Anxiety" combines everything I love about this band, the remaining songs seem to err too much on one side of this wall or the other. They are unable to find that balance that allows their crazy side to meet their sensible side in a way that, certainly in the past, made this band what they were. The effort here is admirable, but for me at least they don't come quite close enough to pulling it off.

Rating:  It's like when your mind has a mind of it's own.  3/5.

571. Faith No More / Introduce Yourself. 1987. 3.5/5

Faith No More had been around for a surprisingly long period by the time they got around to recording their debut album in 1985 on an independent label, having had to raise most of the money themselves to get it recorded. It did at least gain some attention, and in late 1986 the band was signed to Slash Records, and through their parent companies and subsidiaries they were able to ensure that they would get better exposure for their follow up. Just as important, the production was also a step above their debut album, and the songs also written with a tighter and intense sound about them.
The band’s music indeed was somewhat unique for its time. In many ways the band was ahead of its time in regards to the songs they produced. Roddy Bottom’s combination of keyboards and rhythm guitar allows the band a unique switch between power and synth based rock, and combined with the hard riffing of Jim Martin’s guitar and Mike Bordin’s spectacularly off-timing drumming gives the songs that alternative feel that was ahead of its time. Add into the mix the vocals of Chuck Mosley, who gives it an added hip hop and rap flavour around the attempts to soar through other parts of the songs, and you truly have the basis of a band bringing something new to the ether. And this is perhaps one of the interesting things about this album. It IS a different style from most of the bands around at that time, and it is creating a new path in that respect. Because even though this is a better effort song-wise, and certainly better production-wise than their first album, “Introduce Yourself” is still a much maligned album in the history of Faith No More. It is rarely brought up in discussion of the best Faith No More albums. Indeed, many people still consider that Faith No More started with “The Real Thing”, and that anything that occurred before that point doesn’t really exist. And that for me does take away from the fact that they were cutting edge well before “The Real Thing” hit the shelves.

Whenever I listen to this album, I still find it comes in two sections, that the songs can be placed into two categories. There’s the slower, drawn out, slightly more reflective tones in some of the songs, and then there are the songs that just expend energy, extolling the virtues of jumping and thrashing around the room as you listen to them.
“Faster Disco” kicks things off with a great heavy beat, and is followed by “Anne’s Song” which sticks in that same tempo with Billy Gould’s funky bass the mainstay of the song. “Chinese Arithmetic” cuts in at a slower beat, building slowly into the track under the synth to the bass and drums, before the guitar and vocals hit and bring the song to life. “Death March” may be a surprising name for a song in this section in explaining the slower tempo songs, but it certainly fits, moving along in a mid-tempo dominated by Bottom’s synth and Mosley’s vocals crooning over the top. “The Crab Song” often divides opinion, given that the first half of the song is pretty much solely the domain of Mosley whining over the top of the quiet keys, before exploding in the second half with Bordin’s drums and Martin’s guitar taking over.
For me, the best song on the album is the title track, “Introduce Yourself”. It has great energy and bounce with Mosley spitting out the lyrics. I honestly can only imagine just how popular this song may have become to the masses if it wasn't for the updated and remodelled version of "We Care a Lot" that accompanies it here. “We Care a Lot” originally appeared on the debut album, and for this album it was reborn and given a few touch ups here and there before being released as the power single for the album. For the masses, it was this song that ended up becoming the crowd favourite at live performances, though for me "Introduce Yourself" could have been that song too. Don’t get me wrong, it is still popular with the fans, but not in the same way. That has always interested me. “R N’ R” is another of the songs that pumps through the speakers, especially Bordin’s drums that thump hard throughout, and the supporting vocals as well. The songs “Blood” and then “Spirit” finish off the album in a similar way to the start of the album, unique in their concept and the way they draw together those aspects of the band’s musicianship.
Whether you love Chuck Mosely, or you hate him, and opinion on him is split, the fact remains that the rest of the band was the core of the music, and their musicianship is second-to-none. The one man who stands up again here is Jim Martin, whose guitaring was possibly the forefront of the band until the scene-stealing Mike Patton showed up for the next release. Though somewhat buried by the mega-success the band experienced with their next album, “Introduce Yourself” deserves respect for paving the way for that eventual success.

I don’t know anyone who had this album when it was released. In Australia the Faith No More revolution came with the release of the following album and the huge single release of “Epic”. So, like everyone else, I discovered this album after “The Real Thing” made them huge, and as I did in those days then went searching for anything else the band had done. And as a result, like most people, there was a certain degree of disappointment in the initial listening's to this album. With Chuck Mosley installed on vocals rather than his replacement Mike Patton, there felt like a lot less energy in the singing here. And the songs didn’t feel as compelling or vibrant. But that was an unfair comparison, because “The Real Thing” was amazing, the culmination and progression from this album and a change in vocalist.
So it was important, in my mind, that this album doesn’t get judged against what was to come, because that path was also broken into many paths. And “Introduce Yourself” does require one to be in the correct mood to get the most out of it. It has a number of mid-tempo songs that are cleverly broken up by the big time harder songs in “Introduce Yourself” and “We Care a Lot” and “R N’ R”, which gives the impression that the album continues to move smoothly throughout.
So the most difficult part of listening to this album is not trying to believe you are listening to “The Real Thing” or “Angel Dust” or “King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime”, because that will destroy any chance it has. Just put it on, sit back and let the tide take you where it wants, and you can still gain a great deal of enjoyment out of this album.

65. Faith No More / Angel Dust. 1992. 4/5.

I guess after The Real Thing, Faith No More had to sit down and wonder, “Where do we go from here?”.
The answer is Angel Dust, an album that quickly sorted out who was a fan of the band, and who had just come on for the popularity of the previous release.

Full of great guitar riffs from Jim Martin, the 'maturing' vocals of Mike Patton and the pounding drum beats of Mike Bordin, this is as far away from The Real Thing as this band could muster. There was no doubting their intentions. They wanted to shake things up.

This is a real shock to the senses. From Land Of Sunshine, Midlife Crisis and Everything's Ruined, to Be Aggressive, Crack Hitler and Jizzlobber, this is an album that you literally either love, or abhore to the depths of hell.

Memories : In 1992, friends of mine were living in a house in Kiama Downs. I walked in one day to hear this insane album being played at a million decibels upstairs. It was my indoctrination to Angel Dust.

Rating : Madness. Absolute madness. 4/5.

46. Faith No More / Album Of The Year. 1997. 2.5/5.

Following on from the tour that had promoted their “King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime” album, the band members all split up and continued on with their lives. It seemed that almost all of the band had side projects they were working on, and their schedules were crazy busy. Mike Patton was still touring with Mr Bungle while the others wrote and demo’d material for the new album, but when Patton returned and listened to it he claimed he only liked half the songs, and only felt as though he could sing on half of the songs. If it had been me I would have suggested that if he had been around for the writing process perhaps he’d have felt better about it! From here guitarist Dean Menta was fired (Billy Gould suggested it wasn’t his playing but his writing which contributed to this) and Jon Hudson was hired to replace him. However, Bordin went off to drum for Black Sabbath, Roddy Bottum went off on tour with his side project Imperial Teen, and Patton went off to join his wife in Italy, while Billy Gould went touring Europe for 4-6 months. In the end the album was dubbed the ‘miracle baby’ as it was a miracle anything was recorded.
The album began being recorded in early 1997, though the band was never all together to do so, with members coming in at different times to record their parts or learn new songs that had been written in their absence. And the long absences between the points where all of the band members were in the studio at the same time helped to produce rumours that the band was on the point of separation. These were rubbished by the band at the time, but the somewhat haphazard way that the album had been compiled gave the impression that the group was on limited time.

It is interesting to me that this album has been coined as both a ‘heavy metal’ album, which of course Faith No More have never been labelled as doing before, and a ‘latter day grunge’ album, something else they have never done before. Indeed, trying to label this album as any particular genre is a futile gesture. It’s just a typical out and out strange arse Faith No More album, which is the best way to classify it. The first two singles are perhaps the most accessible songs on the album, which is no doubt why they released them as singles, but even they have their strange quirks about their composition. “Ashes to Ashes” made top ten in Australia, but the follow up “Last Cup of Sorrow” did not have the same effect, and sank in most markets. Given the success of the band in Australia – this album did go to number 1 on their charts – the lack of success for the singles can perhaps be seen to be directly related to the way the band wrote for this album compared to the preceding album.
The songs overall are slower than the band has produced before. The tempo in about half of the songs sits in the slow crawl category, occasionally intensified by a burst of energy either from Patton’s vocals of from a guitar riff. There is an experimentalist atmosphere throughout, that steals from different music genres without activating the best parts of those genres. There are punk tendencies without the speed or pure anger that the best punk bands expel. There are heavy metal riffs that don’t ring through true because they are held back in the mix so as not to have the songs fully integrate that part of the music. Bordin’s drums sound like they are about bust out and really take control at times, but they refrain from breaking out of the bubble and instead hold their pattern within that.
This is not to completely criticise the songs here, but to point out that there has never felt as though there is any rhyme and reason to the tracks on this album, compared say to “The Real Thing” and “Angel Dust”. Those albums flow, they don’t have to sound the same all the way through but they flow from one song to the next. This doesn’t have that. And the overall sludgier pace of the album tends to hinder that as well. There are songs like “She Loves Me Not” that I’m not sure really appeal to anyone in the band’s audience. It sounds like it should be a Stevie Wonder song. And if it does then they probably won’t like the follow up song “Got That Feeling” because of the opposite end of the spectrum it is at. In the long run, with hindsight, perhaps it is easy to be critical and suggest that the method of writing and recording the album may have brought about this haphazard way the album moves between moods and pace. Whatever it is, it is certainly a ride of some description.

I have loved Faith No More since I was first introduced to them back in 1989, and I saw them on every tour from that point on, right up until this album. I bought this album in its first week of release, and had it rotation for about a month, and then it slipped back onto the shelves. My opinion at the time? Well, to say I was disappointed would have been accurate. I’d seen them twice on the previous album’s tours and the band was still great live and all of the songs from that album sounded awesome live. This album was far enough removed from that, that I wasn’t sure just where my enjoyment for it stuck. The band then toured later in 1997 and I saw them at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney that night... and, wasn’t shocked so much as... bored shitless. The band was rigid, unexcited. The songs from this album were average, and they played cover versions of “Easy” and “Midnight Cowboy” and “I Started a Joke” and “This Guy’s in Love With You”. It was so far from the other gigs I had seen them play over the years it just wasn’t funny. I walked out feeling ripped off, and that was pretty much what I felt about this album too. I felt everything had changed, and that the band just didn’t have their heart in it anymore. And as it turned out, this was exactly the case, as they eventually went through with the break up of the band. And I know at the time I felt that was the right decision, because if “Album of the Year” was the best that they could come up with at this time of their career, then it was time to have a little rest and see if they could do something else on their own.