Faith No More - The Art of the Mix

In the mid-1980s, while Europe was in the grip of metal classic, post-punk and synth-pop, on the other side of the Atlantic bands like Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone and Living Colour were trying, to varying degrees, to cross funk and rap with rock and punk. The result is the so-called “crossover rock”, or more simply crossover, often hastily labeled by critics of the time as “funk metal” too (a term, though, that fails to account for the punk/hardcore side of some bands, or the rap/pop/rock side of others, and whose use can in fact only really apply to one fringe of the crossover scene). Following a similar path, California's Faith No More would blend these elements together, creating one of the finest examples of this hybridization, which would ultimately explode in popularity thanks above all to the recruitment of the brilliant, talented singer Mike Patton.

Taken individually, none of the ingredients that make up their music is truly innovative: rock and rap, punk and funk, metal and grunge have all, in one way or another, been tried before. The band's skill lay in making them coexist in a compact, unified form, immediately recognizable (thanks to the personality of the individual musicians) and destined to set a benchmark both on a technical level (rhythmically as well as melodically) and on an aesthetic one. Their stylistic evolution would go on to make them one of the main influences on the entire alternative metal scene of the Nineties, and in particular, on multiple levels, on the nu-metal movement. 

Faith No More were formed in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in 1983. The initial line-up featured Roddy Bottum on keyboards, Mike Bordin on drums, Bill Gould on bass, Jim Martin on guitar and Chuck Mosley on vocals (the name was inspired by Mike Bordin and Bill Gould's previous band, Faith No Man).

At the time, the reference genres in California for heavy sounds were thrash metal (Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer) and hardcore punk (90% of hardcore bands were Californian and had formed in the early Eighties); the band's idea, though not entirely clear at first, was to draw on a bit of everything without focusing on any one influence in particular, possibly with an irreverent touch in the style of Frank Zappa.

In San Francisco, the motivations that pushed musicians to pursue a career were completely different from those of their Los Angeles counterparts. Many of them came from decidedly humble backgrounds, with few prospects for improvement, and greed was rarely at the root of their artistic goals the way it was in L.A. Furthermore, San Francisco is a fairly rainy city, with strong European influences.

Unlike almost every other band, Faith No More integrated European sounds right from the start, mainly channeled through Bottum's keyboards and Mosley's tormented temperament (raised as an adopted child, but born to a Jewish biological mother and a biological father who was half African-American and half Native American), both of which helped add an introspective mood to the whole. It soon became quite clear that they had no intention of compromising on their musical vision, earning them, especially around town, the nickname of "anti-hippie band" early on. 

Their debut album We Care A Lot (released in some early pressings simply as “Faith No More”) came out on Mordam in 1985. While still a long way from the creative blueprint that would define their later work, the record tries to move beyond both its kinship with new wave industrial, in the mold of Killing Joke and with funk/dub in the style of Gang of Four, through various vocal, keyboard and, above all, guitar experiments.

The opening is left to the title track, an ironic song that quickly became the band's anthem (and a staple on Seattle's college radio), marked by a funk rhythm chewed over in martial fashion, broken up by bursts of punk violence, underpinning Mosley's almost rap-like delivery, before giving way to a chorus lifted by keyboards and pub-style backing vocals. "The Jungle" lays out a guitar formula halfway between funk and punk, where the hammering rhythm section, enveloping keyboards and deranged vocals get lost in reverb that echoes a darkness reminiscent of Joy Division. By contrast, the basic structure of "Mark Bowen" is fairly influenced by the glam-metal scene (at the time represented by bands like Motley Crue), although the vocals settle into a street-punk wail and the drums once again work through a syncopated beat drowned in waves of synth, creating a rather novel stylistic mix.

"Greed", one of the album's best-known tracks, combines post-punk and synth-pop as the fashion of the time demanded, though it ends up less interesting than the menacing metal crescendo of the following instrumental, "Pills For Breakfast". "As The Worm Turns" also picks up the post-punk intent in compelling fashion, thanks to a piano with clear echoes of Rachmaninoff that gives way to synth, backed by muscular guitars and drumming, over which Mosley's ragged vocals fit perfectly. 

Ultimately, although the album carries historical significance and undeniable originality, the direction Faith No More wanted to take was still far from clear. The mix of influences still sounds disjointed and confused (in a way consistent with the album cover itself, an eight-pointed star which, according to Gould's intentions, represents chaos, order through disorder), at times overly rough around the edges, and indebted to too many trends fashionable at the time; in particular, it's the rhythm section that struggles to stand out, since on every track it still expresses itself through new wave clichés. Something was still holding back the band's creative drive.

With their second album, Introduce Yourself (recorded in 1986 and released on Slash in 1987), Faith No More took a decisive step forward: the record marks an important turning point in the band's career, which, thanks to a more mature rhythm section and a generally more spontaneous, bolder attitude unafraid of musical cross-pollination, finally managed to forge a sound of its own.

Gould's bass work deepens the funk influences (in these years he also played with Les Claypool of Primus). Gould, together with Bordin, breaks free from the band's new wave roots, while Martin's guitar steps up to take centre stage and Mosley's voice sheds its more melodramatic tones, opening up to more eclectic solutions; Bottum's keyboards become less overbearing and, rather than simply fuelling the guitar crescendos, try to move the arrangement toward greater refinement.

So we go from the keyboard-driven delirium of "Faster Disco", with its reverbed, layered vocals (interrupted by syncopated breaks typical of funk-rock), to the mix of symphonic synth-pop, half-sung half-rapped vocals and funk bass found on "Anne's Song". It's the prelude to a real explosion, which arrives with the minute and a half of the furious title track, whose production is notably abrasive in terms of drumming and guitars, pushing the funk-punk of Red Hot Chili Peppers to a new level of sonic violence.

The ironic attitude shown so far is wiped out by the following "Chinese Arithmetic", which recalls the dark atmospheres of some tracks on the first album, reworked and developed through greater expressiveness on keyboards, accompanying Mosley's mounting rage and violence as he swings between graceless punk invective, melodic choruses and fast-paced rapping.

In "Death March", a sort of hardcore punk and avant-garde new wave happening, the obsessive keyboard textures are pushed to the fore, while Mosley's guitar parts underline and mesh perfectly with the distant tribal percussion that Bordin weaves into the rhythmic pattern. Midway through the album, the band also chooses to include a remake of the anthem from the previous record, "We Care A Lot", decidedly improved in terms of production (a more than understandable choice, given that it's the most original and irreverent track on their debut).

Introduce Yourself is an album that absorbs funk, rap, hardcore, metal and flashes of avant-garde, allowing Faith No More to join the ranks of bands with an immediately recognizable style. With Introduce Yourself, crossover-rock is no longer just a synonym for the sum of funk, rap and metal, but takes on a new meaning, opening up to a wide-ranging stylistic landscape.

The album's weak points can basically be traced to Mosley's vocal approach, which, while well suited to giving the songs a rough punk attitude (and a driving force behind the lyrics), is rather unsteady in the more melodic passages. As if that weren't enough, the band starts to grow intolerant of some of Mosley's eccentric behaviour, both in rehearsal (when the singer decides to turn entire evenings into acoustic-guitar sessions) and on tour (when he routinely shows up late onstage for the show). These and other drug-fuelled erratic episodes lead the other members to leave the band one after another, with the aim of isolating Mosley — effectively firing him (Chuck would go on to become, for a time, the singer of Bad Brains and, soon after, of Cement, with whom he recorded two albums — he sadly passed away in 2017, after a long period of sobriety, due to causes once again linked to drug addiction).

The now-quartet regroups fairly quickly around new musical ideas to work on. After briefly considering the possibility of replacing Mosley with Chris Cornell (an idea ultimately dropped due to a lack of sufficient stylistic affinity, even though Soundgarden were good friends and hadn't yet released an album), they instead recruit the then twenty-one-year-old Mike Patton on the recommendation of guitarist Jim Martin, who had heard a demo by Mr. Bungle, Patton's band since his high school days.

Patton is the exact opposite of Mosley: a product of white American culture, he's a rather ordinary young man from Eureka, in Northern California, juggling duties as a student and a clerk in a record shop. Initially, he's hesitant to join the band, partly out of respect for his main musical project.

His official entry into Faith No More comes when the rhythmic/harmonic structure of the new songs is already set, but within two weeks Patton manages to confidently complete the lyrics and vocal parts needed to wrap up the band's contractual obligation to Slash Records. His eclectic talent suddenly becomes the key to understanding much of the Faith No More world as we know it today. With a performance that is at once brash, ironic and experimental (recalling the work of Corey Glover in Living Colour), Patton is not only the right man for Faith No More's live performances at that moment, but also a figure able to bring out the best in the band's uncompromising nature.

Not to mention that the melting pot of influences within the band begins at this point to turn into a kind of web stretching in many directions: in 1989 Patton likes Sade, as does Bottum, who however is also following Detroit's techno scene, while Bordin continues to love Killing Joke and African percussion, and Jim Martin remains an aficionado of Black Sabbath and Corrosion of Conformity (or, more broadly, of metal in general, as shown by his long-standing friendship with Cliff Burton and James Hetfield of Metallica). Although the band never really had a true leader, it's Bill Gould who becomes the glue holding it all together.

The Real Thing comes out in June 1989, delivering to the public an explosive mix that quickly becomes an important reference point for the crossover scene of the era (which also includes, for instance, Jane's Addiction). This time the strength of the material is matched by an extraordinary commercial comeback, driven by the melodic openness and greater mainstream appeal of Patton's voice.

In particular, the sudden commercial success is largely thanks to the first single, "Epic", which will probably remain forever, for better or worse, the band's best-known track (as well as being the first true example of rap-metal to get airplay on American radio); the climb up the charts is possible precisely because of an innovative approach that doesn't sacrifice immediacy: funk bass with rapped vocals, a rock chorus building to an epic crescendo (fittingly enough), digressions in which Patton has fun letting out guttural sounds, ironic lyrics, and a disarming ending in which a melancholy piano theme gradually takes over from the closing guitar line, blurring the line between serious experimentation and self-parody in a way that recalls, in spirit more than in outcome, Frank Zappa.

The opener "From Out of Nowhere" immediately makes clear the metal component of the record, masterfully carried by guitars and keyboards locked into an epic-toned progression, closer to fantasy imagery than to the multi-ethnic, street-level sound of crossover; "Falling To Pieces" is a memorable funk-rock power ballad, a sort of sophisticated take on the Red Hot Chili Peppers sound (which would later cause friction with that band over accusations of copying, especially regarding "Epic" — worth noting that the two bands had shared a 56-date tour just a couple of years earlier), elevated by Patton's vocal interplay.

If up to this point in the album a sparkling, infectious youthful enthusiasm had been palpable, with "Surprise! You're Dead!" the band vents its streak of destructive madness, slotting it in perfectly just before "Zombie Eaters", which starts out as a placid lullaby (with a guitar arpeggio "borrowed" from "Love Seems Doomed" by the Blues Magoos, 1966) that gradually grows more searing, following the mood set by Introduce Yourself. The title track, across its 8 minutes of stylistic leaps, shows both the strengths and the limits of the band's new direction: the shifting between jazzy touches, funk syncopation and vocal melodies remains engaging, but it doesn't quite justify either the serious tone or the length and, above all, it lacks real, palpable tension. The "new" Faith No More, having reshaped the sound of the previous album into a more fluid, more marketable form, seem far more at ease in the realm of light-hearted irony. "Woodpecker From Mars" is an instrumental orgy of schizophrenic rhythms that ventures into prog-metal territory, while the compelling soul-jazz piano-and-voice ballad "Edge Of The World" closes the album on the vinyl edition (while on all other formats it's preceded by a successful cover of "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath, suitably reworked for the occasion).

What strikes producer Matt Wallace the most (besides, of course, the impact of the songs, all written starting from actual conceptual images rather than musical ideas) is Patton's choice to sing the whole record with a nasal, high-pitched inflection, deliberately different from the one he used with Mr. Bungle; a move that probably reveals Mike's wish to keep the vocal character of the two bands clearly separate, once again out of respect.

In any case, despite the guitar and keyboard work having undoubtedly grown in expressive maturity, and a more appealing stylistic mix thanks to Patton's arrival, something still seems to have been lost in the transition from the previous Introduce Yourself: the more punk, subversive, abrasive edge is pared down to a minimum. The album can certainly be called a success and stands as a good example of critical and commercial consensus (even though metal fans repeatedly object to the whole rap aesthetic of "Epic"), but it will take a further change of direction to move away from a formula that's still somewhat youthfully unrefined.

Despite the relentless attempts by industry insiders to pin FNM down to one specific genre, the band continues on its artistic path by rejecting every label and asserting its need to have no fixed rules (indeed, constantly shifting course to dodge them).

Buoyed by the international success of The Real Thing, Patton manages to get into the good graces of the music business (Warner Bros) just enough to also make his recorded debut with his original band, Mr. Bungle. The episode is far from irrelevant, since it is precisely the unpredictable, schizophrenic and irreverent character of Mr. Bungle's material that, through Patton himself, allows a new facet to emerge (starting as early as the following record) in Faith No More's stylistic signature: that of collaging genres, emotions, and moods.

The Mr. Bungle project is also crucial in introducing a paradigm shift in the minds of many guitar-oriented rock musicians, through an outright de-centralization of the six-string in favor of sheer sonic eclecticism. It's no coincidence that, around that time, the idea starts to take hold that maybe it isn't so necessary to always have a guitar solo in the middle of a song.

In 1992, the world is rocked by the grunge cyclone, and in particular by the commercial fury of "Nevermind" by Nirvana, which becomes the benchmark for anyone venturing into rock; Faith No More experience this shift in perspective by working on further personalizing their sound alongside trusty Matt Wallace, co-producer of all the band's albums. Beyond rethinking the strictly metal component (which is by now going through a genuine identity crisis), the band chooses to keep alive and well its urge to take risks, without of course bowing to any commercial obligation.

Permeated by an aura of semi-pessimistic existential crisis (captured in the first single, "Midlife Crisis") and largely devoid of easy choruses, the baroque and maximalist Angel Dust comes out in June, again on Slash Records, and ends up wrong-footing the audience (used to whistling along to "Epic" or "Falling To Pieces") while sending critics into raptures.

This is the first work in which every nuance of the band's sonic complexity manages to find an almost perfect balance, while the songwriting finally confirms Patton's meaningful contribution, as he also goes back to singing in his true vocal timbre. The underlying mood is terribly serious and mature, only seemingly tempered by the liveliness and schizoid verve that characterizes the song structures, built down to the smallest detail.

The opener alone (and second single), "Land Of Sunshine", propelled by a penetrating, funk-rooted bassline, is enough to make listeners understand they're facing a far-from-immediate listening experience: the track starts almost instantly, dodging any kind of intro, and serves up a first chorus made up essentially of schizophrenic laughter over a backdrop worthy of a circus carousel. The two bridges emphasize symphonic aspects, while in the finale Patton seems to mock operatic vocal delivery, dragging it into a grotesque narrative. In three minutes and forty-five seconds, Faith No More easily and coherently cram in such a wealth of references that the same feat seems almost unthinkable for any other band. The power ballad (with rap-metal inserts) "Everything's Ruined", the psychopathic waltz of "Caffeine" and the Arabian-tinged "Smaller And Smaller" — embellished by dramatic keyboard tones and the chant of a Native American in the bridge — touch on the same territory, at times with an even greater unifying power.

But that's not the only leitmotif of the record. Angel Dust sees, for the first time in the band's recordings, the introduction (poorly digested by Jim Martin) of samples, albeit not dominant, across a fair number of tracks (the interludes in "Midlife Crisis", "Smaller And Smaller" and "A Small Victory"), while outright aggression is confined to "Malpractice" (a clear example of a Mr. Bungle-style nightmare) and "Jizzlobber".

Truly peculiar results are also achieved by "Be Aggressive", wedged between a Spanish Inquisition-style organ and a cheerleader chorus (the chorus quotes a famous American sports chant); the country piano ballad "RV" (with Patton playing an old drunk with a staggering gait, before launching into an excellent chorus); and the already mentioned "A Small Victory", described by a critic of the time as "a sort of Madame Butterfly performed by Metallica and Nile Rodgers together".

The only track that actually seems to repeat the sound and formulas of The Real Thing is "Kindergarten", whose metal framework is softened by melodic keyboard constructions, while funky basslines and rap flourishes give way to Patton's melancholy, decadent vocals. Closing the record is "Midnight Cowboy", a reworking of the theme from the 1969 film of the same name (betraying all the band members' shared passion for film scores), an accordion lullaby accompanied by majestic, Morricone-style keyboards, resulting in something deliberately far removed from a peaceful, gentle goodnight wish.

Non-American versions also include, as the final track, "Easy", a cover of the soul-pop hit of the same name by Lionel Richie & The Commodores (already played live back in the days of The Real Thing), which, curiously — or perhaps simply given its catchiness — becomes Faith No More's biggest hit single in Europe.

Angel Dust is what you'd call a rock opera, one of the most representative albums of its decade, a container overflowing with ideas and emotions, featuring a Mike Patton who proves to be a crazed ringleader with an extraordinarily eclectic voice (capable of taking on any timbre, intonation, or expressive style). Beneath a blanket of sounds clearly less accommodating than those of the band's previous work (this is, after all, a schizophrenic-existential drama set to music — essentially a concept album influenced, more than it might seem, by the experimentation and collage techniques of musicians like Frank Zappa and Foetus), lies a deep nature, almost inaccessible on first listen.

The front and back covers push the unconscious toward an extreme duality (the ethereal beauty of a little egret and the cruelty of a butcher's cold-storage room), further underscored by the title itself ("angel dust" is also the common name for a powerful hallucinogen, PCP).

Faith No More's institutionalization is by now complete. Guns 'N Roses and Metallica snap them up to open their upcoming world tours (in Italy, Soundgarden will also be on hand as the opening act for Axl Rose and co.). In those same years, an alternative metal scene starts to emerge, drawing on crossover, sludge and grunge to forge new styles and new trends, often branching out in multiple directions while still referencing the same roots. The heavy alternative audience will make up a demographically substantial part of the Nineties, with all the various fads and trends that will shape it.

It doesn't take long for a new generation of bands to surface in the media, citing Faith No More (both in their sound and in interviews) as a major influence: some notable examples during the Nineties are Korn, Deftones, Incubus, Snot; moving into the following decade, it will then be the turn of System of a Down and Birthday Massacre to join the ranks, and in the years that follow, even bands from other scenes, such as Pain Of Salvation, will on occasion draw explicitly close to the Californian band.

Meanwhile, the Primus also break into the mainstream thanks to the doors opened (in terms of media exposure) by Faith No More, with whom they share a cultural background and have been sharing stages since the Eighties (there's genuine friendship between members of the two bands).

Ultimately, several acts, successful both commercially and critically, will pay tribute to Patton & co. Alternative-metal will define the decade, and retroactively Faith No More too will be included in it by critics.

Being at the center of the storm, however, also means being a victim of the centrifugal effect; gradually, guitarist Jim Martin's discontent (driven mainly by his disagreement with some of the band's artistic choices – which lead him to crudely describe the sound of Angel Dust as “gay disco” – and by his aversion to media intrusions) reaches the point of no return.

Faith No More and Jim Martin part ways after the 1993 summer tour, and this reveals just how crucial his presence had been in shaping the final balance of the songs: the following fifth full length, King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime (Slash, 1995), on which Mr. Bungle's Trey Spruance is brought in to play guitar (effectively turning the band into a hybrid of Faith No More and Mr. Bungle, given that Patton already came from that same group), shows that Martin's previous contribution wasn't limited to upholding the band's more classic heavy-metal influences, but also served to rein in and give shape to Patton's experimental excess. The album in fact swallows up even more musical styles than its predecessors, but without managing to replicate either the spontaneous, teenage-schizoid freshness of The Real Thing or the mature command with which the masterpiece Angel Dust had been assembled. Each track sticks to the conventions of a single genre, rarely managing to innovate on it. What's emphasized instead is a pure collage effect, with tracks that each seem mostly to quote, and almost parody, a certain musical genre.

The project doesn't win over much of the audience, and even less the critics, though it still boasts some interesting moments. The opener “Get Out”, driven by a memorable combination of rhythm and vocals, becomes an example of powerful, violent crossover that plants the seeds for an entire generation of bands to come (substantially shaping, for instance, the sound of the then-fledgling Incubus). Despite the catchiness and fine melodic ideas in the verses of the single “Ricochet”, little really sets it apart from the power-ballads heard on the two previous albums, while “Evidence” feels fresher and more intriguing. The energetic “The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies” is also more convincing, its menacing tones entirely held up by Patton's schizophrenic vocal solutions.

The band then goes on to touch still-unexplored territory with “Star A.D.”, an orgy of instruments played half in 3/4 (there's a bit of everything: horns, synthesizer, organ), and with the bossa nova experiment of the quiet “Caralho Voador”. The shadow of “Malpractice” resurfaces in “Cuckoo For Caca”, a violent, hardcore-tinged outburst packed with screams and driven by schizoid drumming, as it does in the wild “Ugly In The Morning”. The catchy punk-rock of “Digging The Grave”, the first single, remains one of the album's most immediate moments, but also one of its most straightforward. Perhaps less predictable is “Take This Bottle”, a slow country ballad with a crooning delivery.

The album's conclusion is entrusted to the title track in succession (a mix of folk-rock tones and guitar outbursts), the pop/hardcore of “What A Day” and “The Last To Know” (essentially two power ballads, though once again inferior to similar tracks on previous albums), and the gospel experiment of “Just A Man”.

It isn't an exceptional release, especially since it follows a string of works of notable quality and originality; the heavier tracks, which push the band's sound to new levels of nastiness, will perhaps remain the most influential (contributing to the transition from crossover to nu-metal), but this time the ability to move the audience is reduced to a minimum, supplanted by an uneven display of stylistic showing-off and a new parade of eclectic vocal experiments from the talented Patton, who at the very least confirms himself as one of the most memorable voices in rock.

Following the tour for the album (which brings the band little satisfaction, to the point that several dates are canceled out of sheer apathy), Faith No More decide to devote themselves to a new album.

What for a long time would be counted as the band's last studio album is sarcastically titled Album Of The Year (Warner, 1997), precisely because, by the end of recording, none of the members feel satisfied with the work or, more generally, with the direction their music has taken in recent times. Album Of The Year is thus, seemingly, their swan song.

Twelve tracks, forty-four minutes: Faith No More had never been this stripped-down before. Simple, light, at times naive (steeped in a kind of summer-haze torpor), but also refined (as hinted at by the 1920s photo on the cover). They come out into the open, they have something to say, and they do it by digging through the most hidden corners of their youth: missed opportunities, shattered dreams, but also people who, even if only for a moment, were dear to them and then lost forever (not because they died, but because they simply disappeared, which is worse).

Album Of The Year, on release, is savaged by critics; only some years later is it more fairly reassessed, at least in part, and regarded as an acceptable swan song for a band that had given an entire decade of rock its lifeblood. In truth, many of the tracks have interesting ideas at their core (the grunge-fueled rancor of “Collision”, the electronic touches of “Stripsearch”, the shift from folk to post-grunge in “Helpless”), but in most cases they aren't developed enough to come close to the far more energetic and innovative work of the past.

Better than the rest are the progressive-goth “Last Cup Of Sorrow”, the funk-punk hybrids “Naked In Front Of The Computer” and “Mouth To Mouth”, the symphonic-tinged ballad “Ashes To Ashes”, the schizophrenic hardcore punk of “Got That Feeling”, and the languid, dreamlike atmosphere created by the keyboards on the closing track “Pristina”. Less convincing are the pseudo-love song “She Loves Me Not”, the vocal oddities laid over the martial percussion of “Paths Of Glory”, and the lumbering rock of “Home Sick Home”.

Generally, the same main flaw of King For A Day prevails, namely an excess of structural straightforwardness and a melodic catchiness pursued at all costs, which strip the music of emotional depth and experimental drive, reducing it to a more mannered alternative-rock tinged with grunge.

In the immediate aftermath of Faith No More, Patton pours mind and body into an endless string of musical projects, going on in 1999 to found, together with Greg Werckman, the label through which most of them would see the light of day, Ipecac Recordings. Surrounding himself cleverly, and each time without compromise, with sublime figures from the past, Patton captains projects that are always unexpected, always mocking, not always of high quality, but often unmissable live. Given the sheer volume of releases and the wide swings in quality, each would deserve its own dedicated profile, so here we'll limit ourselves to summarizing the most significant episodes.

With his Mr. Bungle, following their debut, Disco Volante (1995) and California (1999) finally arrive to tear down the boundaries between funk-rock, metal and the avant-garde.

Right after, Patton embarks on a para-musical solo career with the albums Adult Themes For Voices (1996, an atrocious and surreal compendium of burps, giggles, romps, sneers and farts) and Pranzo Oltranzista (a cauldron of sounds of Patton eating, minimal vocalizing, saxophones and percussion, inspired by the futurist bard Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, perhaps indirectly known to him also through Patton's relationship with a woman from Florence). He would return to it in 2010 with Mondo Cane (a title borrowed from a 1962 mockumentary by Jacopetti and Prosperi), a collection of old Italian singer-songwriter tunes, mostly from the Fifties and Sixties, reinterpreted with nimble freshness and a touch of humor, under the aegis of the Emilia-Romagna region, which supported the production.

Under the name Fantômas (alongside names of the caliber of Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins on guitar, Dave Lombardo of Slayer on drums and Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle on bass), they then releaseself-titled (1999) The Director’s Cut (2001),Delirium Cordia (2004) and Suspended Animation (2005), all steeped in a dark, magmatic alternative-metal.

Next, with the Tomahawk project (alongside the guitarist of theJesus Lizard, Duane Deninsonthe bassist of Cows,Kevin Rutmantis,and John Stanier, drummer ofHelmet and Battlesthey releaseself-titled (2001),Mit Gas (2003), Anonymous (2007) and Oddfellows (2013), an experimental avant-rock tinged with metal, while 2006 would bring the electronic/alternative pop of Peeping Tom (album self-titled), 2012 the tribute to Laborintus II by Luciano Berio (with the Ictus Ensemble), 2014 the noise-rock of tētēma (alongside Australian composer Anthony Pateras) and 2017 the abrasive violence of Dead Cross (with Dave Lombardo, Justin Pearson and Michael Crain). 

Beyond Patton's substantial infatuation with soundtracks in general (which will later lead him to get directly involved with “The Place Beyond The Pines”, “La Solitudine Dei Numeri Primi” and, indirectly, with a compilation collecting Morricone's lesser-known work, “Crime And Dissonance”), his long-running collaboration with the even more eclectic John Zorn is definitely worth mentioning: Zorn enlisted him (as early as 1991) both in the studio and live, often for improvisations, across his countless projects: Naked City, Painkiller, Moonchild Trio…

Faith No More's official comeback arrives, after a full eighteen years, with Sol Invictus, released in 2015. The album revisits, not without a certain sense of nostalgia, the sound that made the band a point of reference back in the day. As spontaneous, genuine and, in short, sincere as it is, the record lacks the angry drive and the unhinged attitude, the more youthful traits of their early work. That said, it still manages to sound pleasantly melodic and even catchy, proof that the band is still alive and capable of writing interesting music. Simply put, Faith No More are now more measured and thoughtful, and with this record they're speaking mainly to longtime fans, giving them exactly what they expect.

Some might call the whole thing a rehash, a predictable case of “heard it before”, and in some ways they wouldn't be wrong; but the nostalgic effect is also paired with compositionally solid moments that make for an easy, enjoyable listen. There's enough variety and energy here to satisfy longtime fans, and honestly, it would make little sense to expect further flashes of innovation after all these years. 

Contributions by Alessandro Mattedi, with additional contributions by Claudio Lancia and Tommaso Franci