Artiste: Faith No More
Album: Angel Dust
Spotlight Track: Everything’s Ruined
Label: Slash
Bass: Billy Gould
Drums: Mike Bordin
Vocals: Mike Patton
Keyboard: Roddy Bottum
Guitar: Jim Martin
Produced by Matt Wallace
Once in a while, regardless of genre, a masterpiece of sorts will arise to change the face of music. Faith No More’s Angel Dust is one of these. An experimental followup effort to their Grammy award-nominated LP, The Real Thing, Angel Dust basically introduced guidelines for a funk metal blueprint. A blueprint that bands of the now like Linkin Park have followed (or try to follow) and I must say have made good money on. One of the more complexed albums ever released by a major, critics site that it “reveals a developing facility for combining unlikely elements into startlingly original concoctions” and more importantly, it became Faith No More’s best selling album outside of the US and went Platinum in Europe.
Fans might like to know that although lead vocalist Mike Patton was featured in The Real Thing, it was only with Angel Dust that he had influence in the band’s sound. The band decided not to “play it safe” by following suit with The Real Thing but instead went off in a different direction musically to produce, what we call here at HOT-4-U, a concept album… one that stands the test of time due to it’s sheer creativity and originality. Round of applause for havin’ the balls!
Although during the same time, Red Hot Chilli Peppers was touring with Mother’s Milk, personally for me, I was more into the Faith No More sound cos it had a stronger metal edge to it and a more ‘in-your-face’ kinda funk vibe. Their musicianship style is a take no prisoners kinda feel with hard riffs, badass bass and monster sounds (courtesy of Mike Patton). You can tell that as far as musical influences are concerned, the band’s appetite for music can range from Miles Davis to The Carpenters to Public Enemy to Nile Rodgers to Metallica to Godflesh… and you get it all here in Angel Dust ;)
I chose ‘Everything’s Ruined’ as my Spotlight Track because I absolutely love the song! Hearing the funky bassline and aggressive power chords really brings back fond memories and for me, this is a real complete song where everything gels swee swee. Top notch shit! Other tracks that you MUST check out are ‘Midlife Crisis‘ (how can you not groove to this cut!!), ‘A Small Victory‘ (STEAM!!), ‘Everything’s Ruined‘ (no doubt), ‘Kindergarten’, ‘Smaller and Smaller’, ‘Caffeine’ and ‘Be Aggressive’. Basically the whole album rocks lah folks so don’t sleep on the original funk metal band of our times.
Tangkap This!!!
-Crispian
