Liberation Frequency - Getting to know the Band: Faith No More


Endtroducing – An essential guide to Faith No More By Dan Collacott With more band’s reforming than MPs abusing expense claims, we thought we’d focus on the celebrated reformation of one of the most important rock bands of all time….. the mighty Faith No More. This five piece have inspired hundreds of bands but have never been bettered. Below is a beginners guide to just some of the songs that marked out Faith No More as masters of their art. Current line up: Mike Patton – lead vocals Billy Gould – bass guitar Mike Bordin – drums & percussion Roddy Bottum – keyboards Jon Hudson – guitar
Seven FNM songs from Heaven 7) We Care A lot Before the reign of the living legend Mike Patton began – oddball Chuck Mosely fronted the band and in 1987 this video was released. Taken from debut album ‘Introduce Yourself.’ Featuring psychedelic, dread swinging, garish nonsense of a truly 80s nature. Faith Fact: Courtney Love briefly fronted the band.
6) Epic Three years on and the Mike Patton era is in full swing and this slightly scary video for Epic from Grammy award-nominated second album The Real Thing is getting a fair share of MTV airplay (back when MTV actually played music). Faith Fact: The band got hammered by animal rights for the slow-mo fish out of water sequence in the video.
5) Everything’s Ruined Taken from perhaps the band’s most complete album - the unique and pretty incredible ‘Angel Dust’. Sadly this 1992 release marked the end of stoner legend quick fingered guitarist Jim Martin’s involvement with the band. The video resembled something that some drunk students put together – complete with green-screen silliness and miming teenagers (ok so if you check the video for Be Aggressive you realise singing teenagers is a running theme).
4) Midlife Crisis Another great song from ‘Angel Dust’ the video is shovelled full of painted, stop motion FX and easily their most haunting track. Faith fact: Lead singer Mike Patton provided the growling/howling sound effects of the infected humans in the recent film ‘I am Legend,’ and more recently scored the soundtrack to Crank 2.
3) King for a Day The title song from 1995’s ‘King for a Day Fool For A Life Time’. This song wasn’t released as a single but in my opinion is one of the best songs they have ever done. It fell largely under the radar as the album didn’t get anywhere near the critical acclaim of their previous releases. Singles ‘Digging the Grave’ and ‘Ricochet’ didn’t really hit the mark although the brilliant ‘Evidence’ is more than worth an honourable mention. Faith fact: The making of this album was reported to have nearly torn the already notoriously volatile band apart.
6) Last Cup of Sorrow 1997 saw the release of this epic sounding track from the massively underrated final release ‘Album of the Year.’ A truly epic revival from FNM, but sadly this was to be there last ever album, although their reformation does offer hope of more to come? The video for this song features actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, and was inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo. Faith fact: At a UK gig for post FNM band Tomahawk – an irked Mike Patton whipped out ‘Little Mike’ at the end of the band set and took a slash on the press-pit media!
7) Strip Search This was the final bitter sweet song to be released from ‘Album of the Year’ with a wonderful twist at the end of the surprisingly intrigueing video. Faith fact: Stripsearch was not released as a single in the UK or US! Other Faith No More songs you must hear: Be Aggressive, Easy, Evidence, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, A Small Victory, Falling to Pieces. Album to download: As already mentioned Angel Dust is possibly one the most important rock albums of the last 20 years (and beyond).