Faith No More
Angel Dust

This one's for Ted, who openly challenged me to do it on Facebook.

Faith No More was already a band when vocalist Mike Patton joined for their third album, The Real Thing, in the late 80s. But they weren't a great band, and The Real Thing, despite its popularity (and the enduring single, "Epic"), didn't really change that. It wasn't until Patton grew comfortable with the band - and the band grew comfortable with Patton - that they achieved brilliance. They found that genius on the follow-up, Angel Dust, one of the most confounding, bizarre albums ever to be released on a major label.

The first time I heard Angel Dust, I was a newbie to Faith No More, and didn't know what to make of it - only the poppy "Everything's Ruined" and the thrashier "Malpractice" stuck with me, while the other songs whipped by in a total blur. My loss. Just about everything here is a perfect song. "Land Of Sunshine" carries over The Real Thing's penchant for an immediate opening with heavy guitar and keyboard; the lyrics are taken from fortune cookies and late-night TV. The lyrics on the next song, "Caffeine," make no sense, but the song throttles forward on its own bad will towards threatening ends. "Midlife Crisis," perhaps the best known song here, merges pop and rock in such an audacious way that it barely charted as a single. "RV" is a country song in waltz-time.

And so it goes. There's so much to cover here - the death metal of "Jizzlobber," the avant-garde "A Small Victory," etc. - that I could go on all week. Suffice it to say this is never a boring listen. Closing with an ocarina-driven cover of John Barry's theme to "Midnight Cowboy" (I mean, what the fuck?!), Angel Dust is Faith No More's finest moment, and their most enduring masterpiece.