Faith No More: Classic or Dud

The first two FNM albums are great, though tbh I prefer Patton's live versions of As The Worm Turns and Mark Bowen.

Listening to "King" now and it's objectively good, or at least not bad, but it's missing something, imo. Sounds kind of conventional, relatively speaking. But then, anything would sound conventional after "Angel Dust."

Trey's guitar is pretty grey compared to Big Sick Jim Martin's work. When I interviewed them a few years back, Roddy was pretty explicit that his heroin addiction, exacerbated by his friend Kurt Cobain's death, meant he was pretty much checked out for this one.

Trey is technically a much better guitarist, but that sort of misses the point. Though I just hit "Caca," and that one hits the spot.

Trey is technically a much better guitarist, but that sort of misses the point.

Agreed. You don't want intriguing textural experiments and modernist metal minimalism, you want ludicrous dayglo extravagance to match the other soundclashing elements.

doesn't really have to be an either/or approach. Jim's problem is he was unwilling to expand outside of a very limited scope, whereas the rest of his band actually weren't boring heshers. his contributions were actually great on all of the albums, but he was never going to go along with anything else they did outside of 'thrash metal with keyboards and funk bass' after Angel Dust, and he's still kind of a dick about it in interviews.

KFAD wouldn't have worked with Martin, it works because of how oddball it is and yet it's still tuneful as hell.

the only FNM I don't really vibe much anymore is the reunion album. it got all this praise and all it sounded like was middling mid-album tracks. not 'bad' but I almost never want to listen to it.

not 'bad' but I almost never want to listen to it.

I'd second this, for sure.

xpost Hmm, I dunno. I don't think "King" sounds particularly oddball, just ... slicker? And that's largely the guitar to me, less thrash on top of weirdness, more jazzy licks and other (relatively tasteful) stylistic excursions that Martin had no interest in but also likely couldn't pull off. Iirc Martin felt sidelined (or sidelined himself?) during "Angel Dust," and that may be because for all the crunchy riffs, the guitar is one of the least essential ingredients of the whole stew, imo. Don't get me wrong, I love Martin, and the guitar is important, but I mostly love how he seems more of a supporting player, big power chords rather than noodles and wheedle wheedle. It's always been about the rhythm section for me.

Has there been a recent interview with him?

yeah i never listen to that reunion one, not since it was released

However, as an excuse to reunite, I'm down with it. I mean, it got us this nice surprise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_o9HLlqb4Y

King for a Day is okay, and I really loved it when I was younger, but Angel Dust is the original document--a once-in-a-lifetime album. Even though they got Spruance from Bungle on guitar it's way less weird than Angel Dust.

It feels more 'nu-metal' than Angel Dust. Angel Dust feels like a weird specimen by a divinely inspired band. That's a pretty meaningless description, yeah, but it's just got that ineffable artistry about it and I don't think their other albums have it.

I think they were always an unstable compound, and on Angel Dust the elements rubbed against each other in a singularly brilliant way. The Real Thing leans perhaps too heavy on the pop and metal sides of the equation, King is ugly and perverse, but not in a fun way, Album Of The Year is just kind of thick and claggy. The two Chuck LPs are their own thing, too - more innocent, more twisted, more of that pre-grunge thing before the alternarock sound coagulated and got too macho.

Album Of The Year is a truly underrated album.

xpost Wasn't Patton famously brought into the band with the album mostly done and like just a week or something to prepare his "Real Thing" vox?

Wallace quoted via Wiki:

All the music was written before Mike joined the band, which had gotten rid of the original singer, Chuck Mosley, and the tracks were either in preproduction or being recorded when Mike came in. And when he'd ask if he could make a section longer or different, the band would say "No, this is it, so you have to do it this way". So Mike Patton wrote every lyric and melody to that record over a ten to twelve day period. And it is stunning, because he was nineteen or twenty, and pulled all that out of the air, and put together an incredible record. The only thing we did was spend a couple of days at this coffee shop in San Francisco, because a lot of the songs were really dark and heavy lyrically, crazily so, and I would sit there and go, "Mike, these are some great lyrics, but we need to at least use some metaphor, or couch some of the concepts, but I think you've got some great ideas here". In the end, they really pulled some great songs together.

I get why a lot of people aren't as big on KFAD, but I've always loved it. It's a close third place to Angel Dust and The Real Thing for me. Ricochet, King for a Day, and The Last to Know are all-time favorite FNM tracks. Patton does some career best singing on the album, too. Sometimes I wonder how much the album cover hurt this one. I'm weirdly affected by color palettes and the cover has always seemed so utterly dreary to me. I wouldn't be mad if they released a remaster with a totally different cover.

This is not a band renowned for their cover artwork tbh

https://thehardtimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/fnm.jpg

I think the top 3 and Introduce Yourself are pretty iconic.

yeah i never listen to that reunion one, not since it was released

it's an alright record but has highlights, I still pull up the live version of Superhero on the bbc from time to time

Introduce Yourself is a great sleeve imo.

I love the almost crooner style ballads on KFAD and AOTY -

Angel Dust has really fun videos which I have taken to watching recently, the one for Everything's Ruined is particularly goofy fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usGQjN87BUA

I love the almost crooner style ballads on KFAD and AOTY -

― lurch of england (ledge), Thursday, 21 September 2023 08:19 (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oops didn't realise my half formed though had posted already. Just a Man and Ashes to Ashes the ballads in question. Listening to the albums again now to see if anything else holds up, but I know they're not on a par with Angel Dust which is stunning front to back.

When I get Everything's Ruined in my head it's the live version from channel 4's The Word with Patton going "Oh I'm sorry!" after "he's counterfeit":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP1llUOZ3-8

P sure that was the performance the same week I saw them at Brixton, my first gig with my mates. Amazing, amazing show, best night of my life, until someone poked my contact lens out in the moshpit and I had to wend my way to the back of the venue with the lens in a pint glass and hoping my friends found me on their way out and helped blind me get back home. Also another friend caught Puffy's drumstick at the end of the show and then got thumped by someone else in the pit who walked off with it. GREAT TIMES.

haha I would have killed to see FNM on that tour!

They were so consistently brlliant, tbh. I remember even on their final tour before the split, when they could be forgiven for phoning it in, just being absolute dynamite. Their headlining set at Phoenix 1993 remains one of the greatest gigs I ever saw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhVxbo88VEw

There used to be video of this somewhere that I've probably posted before, but I saw the tour in Philly in 1992 (Helmet opened), and at the end Patton invited the crowd on stage, where they proceeded to grab just about anything not nailed down.

Aw, looks like whoever posted in on youtube back-when deleted their account. And now it is lost. Sad!

the angel dust tour remains the only time I've ever seen FNM live

i distinctly remember patton doing a standing back flip.

He was rolling around the stage like Sonic The Hedgehog at the Phoenix Festival in 1993.

Im a huge FNM fan. Seen them a lot and encountered them in the bay. Billy Gould is the coolest dude alive and should get more credit for the band. Roddy and Puffy are rad folks too.

I mean, I know I've heard Angel Dust lots of times but I don't think it's necessarily more remarkable than King For A Day.
There's loads of mad shit going on in that last album - Ugly In The Morning and Cuckoo For Caca especially, but Evidence is super atmospheric, Digging The Grave is a great single, as is Gentle Art Of Making enemies. There are maybe a few too many ballads and loungey moments, especially towards the end, but I just love the whole dusky gothic city atmosphere

Puffy's an absolute sweetheart, the beating heart of that band.

xp Angel Dust is a towering masterpiece and the end of FNM's Imperial phase, KFAD is an okay record from a band who were running out of steam for various reasons

is kind of how I break it down to an extent

yes, agree

I liked KFAD more than I liked Angel Dust when I was 14-15. I now think it's way inferior. There's too much filler on there and the heavy songs sound too produced & typical. The magic isn't there like it was on Angel Dust.

Album of the Year weights way too much to the typical & produced side, but "Last Cup of Sorrow" and "Stripsearch" are great mid-tempo FNM songs. Mike can sing, he can scream, and he can be really annoying.

KFAD is still my favorite. I don't know how good big jim ripping thrash guitar would have sounded that deep into the '90s. They needed something more taut and streamlined and still got pretty experimental with it — an attitude that carried over nicely to AOTY and Sol Invictus. That's also really the album where Mike becomes the Mike we know today, turning his voice into a diverse instrument of croons and screams outside of the naturally schizophrenic Bungle setting.

'Smaller and Smaller'
'Malpractice'
'Caffeine'

All rely pretty heavily on that dynamic, w/r/t Mike's voice.

Only problems with AOTY - the songs are there, but Hudson is faceless as a guitarist, decent riffs but doesn't really do much more than a weak imitation of Jim Martin in broad strokes, and the bass playing is very subdued and pedestrian.

But I love "Stripsearch", "Ashes to Ashes", "Pristina", and "Collision" a lot.

I prefer it to the reunion album even though Hudson sounds more comfortable on the latter.

Evidence  is super atmospheric

It always reminds me of Ghetto Heaven.

KFAD is still my favorite. I don't know how good big jim ripping thrash guitar would have sounded that deep into the '90s. They needed something more taut and streamlined and still got pretty experimental with it — an attitude that carried over nicely to AOTY and Sol Invictus. That's also really the album where Mike becomes the Mike we know today, turning his voice into a diverse instrument of croons and screams outside of the naturally schizophrenic Bungle setting.

― kirsten gilla band (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, September 21, 2023 6:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This, yes - his voice is incredible on this album in so many ways

It always reminds me of Ghetto Heaven.

― lurch of england (ledge), Thursday, September 21, 2023 8:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Haha yes!

I gave Angel Dust a listen last night and it might need another listen but Patton seems a lot less present in the mix on a lot of the songs on that one

Yeah I think this is why Angel Dust never quite clicked for me any time I tried listening to it after loving KFAD as a teenager.

Patton is such a weapon on KFAD and his vocals are VERY prominent, like the main feature of that record. I put AD on and I'm kind of waiting for the thing to properly kick in cos his voice is so buried under the guitars and other instruments.

This is going to sound bananas to anyone holding this up as the last bastion for FNM, but to my ears it's a transitional album where they're still working out where to go; still leaning into 80s classic rock and Cali-funk; yet to fully embrace the smoky lycanthropic atmospheres I love about the follow-up.

In summary: Small Victory vs Digging the Grave - seriously, is there a competition here in terms of which has the most teeth?

But it's what you're used to I guess, and this might be the classic thing of "the one you hear first".

I would love to hear an alternate mix of AD with Mike's vocals given a bit more prominence over Jim's starting-to-become-dated guitars

In summary: Small Victory vs Digging the Grave - seriously, is there a competition here in terms of which has the most teeth?

I mean, Digging The Grave is astonishingly linear and predictable, like a Helmet song with an opera singer over the top. It has a gutteral punch, but... Small Victory is circus organs and rave samples and sirens and stuka bomber riff runs and pop rap and wild croon and a million other different perverse levels and collisions. It has more ideas in four minutes than most albums.

I've been leaning in harder here than KFAD deserves, partly because I found it SO disappointing BITD. There's a lot to commend it - Ugly In the Morning and Cuckoo For Caca are thrillingly visceral, Just A Man walks that insidious tightrope where you're not sure if they mean it, maaaaan, or are lampooning that kind of overdriven balladry. But Angel Dust always seemed a mad masterpiece to me, the sound of a band who could conceivably do anything, and are hurtling in a million sick directions at once. That's the thrill for me, that one song could be a Tom Waitsian character portrait, the next could smoosh rave music into thrash metal, the next could be a macabre subterranean epic about wanking, and it could close on an aching John Barry cover. And there's still nothing on KFAD as genuinely unsettling, upsetting, terrifying as Jizzlobber.