“The Real Thing,” Faith No More’s first album with Patton, went platinum, and other successes followed across three more studio albums. In 1989, Patton replaced Mosley, expanding the band’s sound (as well as its proto-grunge sex appeal). But like “The Magic Whip” - the strong comeback record just released by another important alternative-era band, Blur - “Sol Invictus” has a certain calm to it, a confident precision that could be the result of its long gestation.įormed in the early ‘80s in San Francisco by Gould, Bottum and drummer Mike Bordin, Faith No More toiled for years in the underground, cycling through various singers and guitarists and eventually scoring a minor hit with “We Care a Lot,” featuring Chuck Mosley on vocals. “Laid-back” definitely isn’t the way to describe a record that includes the rumbling “Separation Anxiety” and “Superhero,” a shouty goth-metal jam. Though it’s full of unexpected twists - the country-tinged “Rise of the Fall,” for instance, and the funky wah-wah break in “Sunny Side Up” - the album doesn’t make a big deal about its eccentricities it’s not trying to impress you with its weirdness the way Faith No More’s earlier work sometimes seemed to be doing. You can hear that freedom on “Sol Invictus,” due Tuesday on the group’s own Reclamation Recordings. Wherever inspiration leads us, that’s OK.” These days, Patton added, “We don’t have to think about being different anymore. Gathered with Patton and Bottum for coffee in West Hollywood the day after the Wiltern show, the bassist acknowledged that Faith No More used to draw a great deal of energy from happily pushing back against others’ ideas of what it should sound like and how it should behave - an effective tactic for musicians as varied as the Sex Pistols and Britney Spears. “It means we’re just us now,” said bassist Bill Gould. And the rock bands that do matter - Muse, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age - originated on the same sort of fringes that Faith No More did.įor a group of self-styled misfits, then, what does it mean to no longer look like rebels? Where Faith No More once defined itself in opposition to a rock mainstream it viewed as a kind of macho wasteland, that rock mainstream has now all but disappeared. Faith No More went on to record a deranged prog-metal masterpiece in 1992’s “Angel Dust” only to follow that with a straight-faced cover of the Commodores’ velvety R&B hit “Easy” - proudly unpredictable moves that influenced young acts like System of a Down and Deftones.īut if the group is still tweaking expectations today, the world around it has changed significantly. Twenty-five years ago, that taste for provocation made unlikely MTV stars out of long-haired Patton and his bandmates, beginning with “Epic,” the left-field 1990 hit with the music video featuring a flopping fish out of water and an exploding piano.
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