Monthly Archives: February 2020

Great news for Faith No More fans emerged on Tuesday morning when the band announced it was going on a North American summer tour, where it’ll play amphitheaters as FNM co-headlines with Korn. Though it pains me to say it, I fear that Korn will be the one who plays last on those hot summer nights. It makes sense. FNM has been around longer, but Korn’s peak was probably bigger.

So, Korn will probably be the one to headline those shows, though hopefully both bands will play similarly long sets. At first, I was kind of bummed that Faith No More (probably) wouldn’t be going on stage last. But man, who cares? FNM is coming to town!

Korn has shown it’s been influenced by FNM, as we discussed previously when lead singer Jonathan Davis showed how much he was inspired by Patton when the two recorded Sepultura’s “Lookaway.”

According to Blabbermouth, founding Sepultura member Max Cavalera said, “Jonathan’s a huge Faith No More fan. He was actually freaking out that Patton was there [in the studio]. He was really nervous, which was actually kind of funny. He kept chewing on his hair the whole time he was in the studio.”

But in the past, FNM keyboardist Roddy Bottum has been dismissive of nu-metal bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit (who I saw open for FNM in 1997!) and Linkin Park.

“No responsibility whatsoever, really,” Bottum told Metal Injection in 2015 when asked if he feels responsible for nu metal. “That’s out of my realm. I don’t even really know what those bands sound like. But I certainly don’t feel an affinity towards them. That’s a weird breed of music. I’m in the fortunate position of having brought the sort of feminine sound to [FNM], so I feel safe. I’m never gonna be tagged as the aggro one, you know? But I guess there’s elements of the band that other people pick up on and focus on. I don’t really hear it myself, though. But I do find that people who make bad music often have really good taste.”

Maybe he was talking about Korn, which did a cover of FNM’s pre-Patton song, “We Care A Lot.” Yes, there was a Faith No More before Mike Patton joined the band, and in 1985, the band had its most commercially successful song that featured Chuck Mosley on lead vocals. It charted in the U.K. It was featured on the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack (I remember seeing that movie in the theater and marking out so hard when I heard the beginning drum beats). And the Independent called it, “the sardonic Live Aid-baiting, funk metal anthem.”

It was started by Mosley …

Continued on by Patton after he joined the band in the late 1980s …

And continued further by Korn’s version (which is actually pretty solid) from 2016.

Hey, maybe we’ll get the chance to see FNM and Korn perform it together on Aug. 22. I’m not a big Korn guy, but that’s actually something I’d really like to experience.

Previously from pre-Patton FNM:

• “As the Worm Turns” (Day 54)
• “Introduce Yourself” (Day 33)

To follow along on the 365 days of Patton, click here for a list of each day’s post.

“Midlife Crisis” isn’t about a midlife crisis at all. Apparently, the song is about Madonna. That notion comes from Mike Patton himself.

“The song is based on a lot of observation and a lot of speculation. But in sort of a pointed way it’s kind of about Madonna…” Patton said, via an old FNM Q&A site. “I think it was a particular time where I was being bombarded with her image on TV and in magazines and her whole schtick kind of speaks to me in that way … like she’s going through some sort of problem. It seems she’s getting a bit desperate.”

As I wrote about earlier this week, I took a listen to “Midlife Crisis” at the end of a difficult day, so it’s kind of strange to read Patton also explain it this way: “It’s more about creating false emotion, being emotional, dwelling on your emotions and in a sense inventing them.”

“Midlife Crisis” was the first single released off FNM’s masterpiece of an album Angel Dust, and it’s the only song the band released that rose to No. 1 on the (modern rock) Billboard charts. It’s a pretty stunning accomplishment, but I bet if you asked 100 people who enjoy music what they remember about Faith No More, most, if not all, would say, “Epic” and (definitely) not “Midlife Crisis.”

To me, “Midlife Crisis” is good; it’s a song I enjoy hearing. But it’s nowhere close to my favorite. In fact, I just looked through Angel Dust’s track listing, and I would probably rank “Midlife Crisis” somewhere around No. 10 out of 12 songs. It’s not terrible. I mean, I’m not turning it off if it shows up on my song shuffle. But I’m not going out of my way to listen to it—unless, I guess, I’m having a tough day and I need some reassurance that my impending midlife crisis is an invention of my mind.

But man, other people just LOVE it. Consequence of Sound wrote that it was FNM’s best song, explaining, “This song has metal, pop, avant-garde, a musically united front with more facets than a diamond. It’s addictive and throbbing, your head on cocaine, your heaven and hell. It’s the Faith No More song. Angel dust, indeed.”

Guitar World even proclaimed FNM’s performance of it as one of the 10 greatest metal performances in late night TV history when Patton and company invaded Jay Leno’s Tonight Show in 1993.

Fair enough. Even if it barely cracks my top 10 on Angel Dust, I’ll still rock out to it. And apparently so do many, many others.

Previously from Angel Dust:

• “Midlife Crisis,” part 1 (Day 69)
• “A Small Victory” (Day 57)
• “RV” (Day 30)
• “Everything’s Ruined” (Day 15)

To follow along on the 365 days of Patton, click here for a list of each day’s post.

I’m writing this after a hell of a day. My washing machine leaked while we were washing towels, and neither my wife nor I noticed until water soaked the floor in the laundry room and in the neighboring kitchen (goddammit, we were both only gone for, like, five minutes when the indoor lake was formed), and so I spent much of my day wet vacuuming the mess with a rented device while trying to write and edit a few SEO pieces for the Daily Dot.

Now, it’s 7 p.m. on a Friday, and I’m annoyed because I made dinner for my kids but not for myself and my wife went out with a friend and I have to return this vacuum to Home Depot and I have to pick up the entire Girl Scout cookie load for my daughter’s troupe tonight. It’s to the point where—and I’m sure if you’re a parent, you’ve experienced this—the sound of my children’s laughter is just annoying the absolute shit out of me.

I’ve resisted telling them to be quiet, because what kind of parent is irritated by their children’s love for each other, but man, I just want them to go to bed soon and for the world to disappear for a while.

I’m not going through a midlife crisis or anything—can you know that for sure until after you’ve already left it behind?—but I’m jonesing to hear Faith No More play one of its biggest hits to give myself some relief from this day.

It’s the third song off the Angel Dust album, and it is called, naturally, “Midlife Crisis.” It’s a good song, and it’s a staple of their live sets. And actually, it’s actually the band’s most successful single. Yes, you still hear “Epic” a decent amount on Sirius XM or in real life. You hardly ever hear “Midlife Crisis” these days, but on Aug. 7, 1992, it reached No. 1 on the Billboard modern rock chart.

I’m actually going to write about that for later this week, because there’s plenty to say about the song’s popularity and what inspired the tune in the first place. But I’m tired, and I don’t feel like writing much more at the moment.

The song hasn’t made me feel much better in the aftermath of my (admittedly, first-world) problems. But in the 231 seconds that the music played in my earbuds, I could take a break and relax.

All right, I’ve got to run and get like 50 cases of Girl Scout cookies. The worst part? They’ll sit in my trunk for the night, because none of them are earmarked for my belly. And I feel like I’m bleeding enough for two.

Previously from Angel Dust:

• “A Small Victory” (Day 57)
• “RV” (Day 30)
• “Everything’s Ruined” (Day 15)

To follow along on the 365 days of Patton, click here for a list of each day’s post.