Epic

You're perfect, yes it's true. But without me you're only you.

I am about 95% off social media and I feel fine. I do occasionally succumb to the scroll, however it is not of the doom variety; more a cursory peek through the curtains to see how the world is getting on. It was on one such peek that I saw it. Nestled amongst Temu adverts and aggressively-pushed hate was a beacon. A shining light in the gloom.

It was a single image: an eight-pointed star with 2027 embossed above it. After years of inactivity, Faith No More are back.

I’ve mentioned Faith No More many times already on these hallowed pages¹. That’s because, and I say this without a shred of hyperbole, they are the greatest band on earth. The single most important cultural touchpoint in my entire life. More important than John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. More important than even Stephen King. Lewis Holmes as you know him would not exist without Faith No More.

This is a band that has made a career out of pushing boundaries, challenging expectations, playing the wind up. They have built their entire legacy on being oddballs, outsiders, otroverts.

And they revel in it.

Credit: Wall of Sound

Formed in San Francisco in 1979 as Sharp Young Men and later Faith. No Man., they cycled through names and lineups for several years before settling on their current moniker in 1983. Singers came and went (including a young Courtney Love) before the mercurial Chuck Mosely joined in 1984 and things settled down.

‘Settled’ is not a state Faith No More exist in for long.

Mosely recorded two albums with the band, We Care a Lot in 1985 and Introduce Yourself in ‘87, before erratic behaviour and clashes with his bandmates saw him exit stage left.

Enter Mike Patton.

Patton was twenty-one when he joined Faith No More in 1988, seven or eight years younger than his bandmates. Bassist Billy Gould said: “He was a fucking brat, an arrogant little baby who’d never sipped alcohol before, never been to a bar, and we were all these crusty fucking guys.“ Yet the friction that fuelled Faith No More undoubtedly increased with Patton’s arrival. He would deliberately goad his bandmates; plugging his other band, Mr Bungle, while doing press for FNM’s The Real Thing.

The Real Thing is an alt-metal marvel and probably the reason most non-fans know of Faith No More. Lead single ‘Epic’ was a breakthrough smash on MTV: heavy metal riffs, Cali hip hop lyrics, pounding rhythms and sweeping synths melding into a glorious alt-soup.

The Real Thing also contains ’Falling to Pieces’ - my gateway into Faith No More after I caught it on Beavis and Butthead late one night. All it took was the bouncing bass intro and my attention was piqued. Throw in the dayglo, goop-and-blood spattered video and I was fully immersed.

I don’t usually put much emphasis on FNM’s lyrics, but ‘Falling to Pieces’ has always resonated with me. I mean, look:

Back and forth, I sway with the wind
Resolution slips away again
Right through my fingers, back into my heart
Where it’s out of reach and it’s in the dark

Sometimes I think I’m blind
Or I may be just paralyzed
Because the plot thickens every day
And the pieces of my puzzle keep crumbling away
But I know there’s a picture beneath

Indecision clouds my vision
No one listens

Because I’m somewhere in between
My love and my agony
You see, I’m somewhere in between
My life is falling to pieces
Somebody put me together

Layin’ face down on the ground
My fingers in my ears to block the sound
My eyes shutting tight to avoid the sight
Anticipating the end, losing the will to fight

Droplets of yes and no in an ocean of maybe
From the bottom, it looks like a steep incline
From the top, another downhill slope of mine
But I know, the equilibrium’s there

Indecision clouds my vision
No one listens

Because I’m somewhere in between
My love and my agony
You see, I’m somewhere in between
My life is falling to pieces
Somebody put me together

Back and forth, I sway with the wind
Resolution slips away again
Right through my fingers, back into my heart
Where it’s out of reach and it’s in the dark

Sometimes I think I’m blind
Or I may be just paralyzed
Because the plot thickens every day
And the pieces of my puzzle keep crumbling away
But I know, there’s a picture beneath

Indecision clouds my vision
No one listens

Because I’m somewhere in between
My love, my agony
You see, I’m somewhere in between
My life is falling to pieces
Somebody put me together

Between my love and my agony
You see, I’m somewhere in between
My life is falling to pieces

Somebody put me together (between)
Somebody put me together (between)
Somebody put me together (between)
Whoa-oh-oh-oh (my life is falling to pieces)

I didn’t know the word ‘neurodivergent’ back then, but did that oddball teenager maybe suspect that something was up? That there was more than just a boinging bassline resonating here? I’m starting to think he did.

Faith No More never offered me rebellion. Loads of other bands were peddling that. This band, revelling on the fringes, taught me it was okay to be different. That weirdness could actually be quite good fun.

Their innate desire to go against the grain really started to come to the fore while touring The Real Thing. It infamously features a muscular, note perfect cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’. Whenever fans cheered for ‘War Pigs’ heavy metal heft, the band would instead bust out a gentle, dreamy cover of ‘Easy’ by The Commodores, soaking up the fans’ outrage.

In time, ‘Easy’ would become their biggest hit.

That constant friction persisted into the recording sessions for their new album.

On Angel Dust, Faith No More set out to push their sound and image far from the radio friendly funk metal they’d served up previously. Patton cut his hair and started dressing like a shifty mechanic; also engaging in sleep deprivation exercises where he drove around sketchy neighbourhoods for inspiration.

Musically, the band channelled every single sonic inspiration they could into their sound, augmenting their metal template with R&B, country, easy listening, Frank Sinatra, The Carpenters. They covered the theme from ‘Midnight Cowboy’ because they could. Patton ditched his adenoidal surf-bum style for screams, growls, croons. They were burning down their house.

Angel Dust² is Faith No More’s magnum opus. It’s also the first CD I ever bought with my own money.

Credit: Billboard

Angel Dust landed in June of ‘92 when alternative rock was at its peak. It is the sound of five guys pulling against each other at every turn, and somehow still creating pure spun gold in the process. There has never been and will never be anything like it.

All five members were at the height of their powers. Patton pushing his natural vocal talents to new extremes; Bottum torturing sweeping soundscapes out of his synths; Big Jim wrangling mighty riffs; bassist Billy Gould and Mike ‘Puffy’ Bordin (a powerhouse southpaw drummer with dreadlocks down to his arse) delivering primordial rhythms that kept everything together.

None of Angel Dust should work; all of it does. Opener ‘Land of Sunshine’ features lyrics constructed almost entirely from messages in fortune cookies; track two, ‘Caffeine’, is a brutal ode to Patton’s experiments with sleep deprivation. ‘Be Aggressive,’ is about fellatio; written by Bottum, who came out in 1993, in a brilliantly subversive fuck you to the macho metal trope.

To a teenage kid desperate for identity, Angel Dust was a lifeline. I dug into its weirdness hard. I had found my vibe: so long as I had this wonderful shit pouring into my cerebral pathways, I could tolerate my peers. ‘Midlife Crisis’ is the perfect example. A delirious mishmash of cool synths, crunching guitars, primal beats, growled vocals and off kilter video, and it was all mine. It remains my favourite song ever to this day.

(It’s about Madonna, fact fans.)

Faith No More kicked off their Angel Dust world tour by supporting Guns n’ Roses and Metallica. They continually mocked the bad boy stylings of GnR, both in the press and to their faces. Gould joked about Rose’s massed security detail; Bottum mocked GnR’s fake beach backstage; Patton urinated on Axl Rose’s teleprompter and went as far as shitting in a chocolate cake in the hopes Rose would eat it. When a hapless roadie stepped up to take a bite, Patton had to fess up. Though Faith No More got on with Metallica, the constant goading of the other co-headliner eventually came to a head. They were fired from the tour in September ‘92.

It seemed like everything they did around this time was antagonistic. ‘A Small Victory’ got a big budget, Hollywood video treatment; follow up single ‘Everything’s Ruined’ had cheap bluescreen effects, hokey acting and teenage extras. The video for that glorious cover of ‘Easy’ saw the band further poking at metal’s posturing by hanging out with drag queens in a hotel room (almost certainly on a Sunday morning).

I loved every minute of it. I aped Patton’s style. I longed to be so gleefully abrasive.

This one is getting long and I have so much I still want to say. It would be so easy to write a potted history but I need to resist. This is about why they are my band.

1995’s album, King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime, is notable for a couple of reasons. For one, they stopped pouring seventeen different influences into a single song, preferring instead to explore individual styles in each song. If Angel Dust is a sonic stew, King for a Day is a glorious buffet.

Alongside straight up rock songs like ‘Digging the Grave’, we’re treated to lounge, jazz, country, gospel. Patton goes from literally gibbering about shit on ‘Cuckoo for Caca’ to gently crooning in Portuguese on ‘Caralho Voador‘. It was a delicious platter to consume while everyone else was mainlining Britpop’s meat and potatoes.

The other reason this album is important is that I have the title tattooed onto my skin. When my tattooist pal put up a bespoke piece of Black Phillip from The Witch I asked him to change his original accompanying text so it read King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime. I like the dichotomy and the song itself is a doozy. Also, I totally chickened out of having the words Angel Dust inked upon me for eternity.

King for a Day also gave me the single greatest gig of my life.

On the banks of the Thames in Windsor there is a wanky and rather tired restaurant named Browns. It’s been there for about twenty-five years, and I hate it because it used to be a ramshackle old boozer with the fantastic name of The Old Trout.

The Old Trout had a short but legendary stint as a venue on the British toilet circuit. Everyone played it on their way up: Oasis, Blur, Elastica, and Pulp all hit the tiny stage on their rise to fame. I saw Reef play there off the back of one single and an advert for Minidiscs.

And, in February of ‘95, Faith No More chose The Old Trout as the warm up venue for their King for a Day tour. Two hundred people crammed into that sweaty little room. Your faithful contributor was one of those fortunate souls.

After an intensely embarrassing interlude where I stared, sack-jawed and in awe, at bassist Billy Gould as he stood next to me at the bar, the house lights dimmed and actual Faith No More started playing about six feet in front of me.

It was chaos. Beautiful chaos. A tiny, frantic moshpit right down the front. Patton bellowing and gibbering and almost close enough to touch. A heavy, brutal set with only ‘Easy’ midway through offering any respite. Dark and sweaty and violent and incredible. I floated out into the chilly Berkshire evening. A tinny bootleg exists on YouTube. I’m sure I can hear myself in the crowd noise.

1997’s Album of the Year was an ironically titled let down. Faith No More’s genre-bending wasn’t dazzling like it used to. But this album contains one of the most archetypal and enduring songs of their career. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ is a titanic jam, bludgeoning and beautiful in equal measure. Famously, it goes down as the loudest performance ever on TFI Friday. A great start to my Friday night out.

‘Ashes to Ashes’ pointed towards plenty of life in Faith No More yet. So it’s fair to say I was devastated when they split up less than a year after its release. They bowed out with, of course, a leftfield cover; releasing a version of ‘I Started a Joke’ by the Bee Gees as their final single.

I was Faith No More-less for eleven years. My entire third decade on this earth saw me surviving on fumes; memories of the good times. Music is undeniably great for that, isn’t it? Music endures.

In April 2009, Faith No More reformed and announced their Second Coming Tour. While I missed them on that run, I did manage to catch them in Hammersmith three years later. That was the night The Muse had her Faith No More cherry comprehensively popped; I watched with more than a little glee as she gawped at the master rug-pullers opening their show with a cover of Delilah by Tom Jones. It was so long ago I didn’t have a beard. Look at this fresh-faced young pup.

Credit: The Muse

In 2014, Faith No More supported Black Sabbath at British Summer Time in Hyde Park. Due to a ticketing error most people paid a fiver to get in³, and The Muse and I were part of a ragtag band of friends and acquaintances.

Towards the end of FNM’s set, my ears pricked up. I went stock still, listening intently like the hunted rabbits of Watership Down.

“Shut up everyone. This is new.”

Blank faces looked back at me.

"Faith No More are playing a new song!”

I think I was down the front in about three seconds.

Long after I thought they were done for good, Faith No More released their seventh album, Sol Invictus. Forever true to contrary form, their first new music in seventeen years was a single called ‘Motherfucker’, thus ensuring absolutely zero radio play. Never change, chaps.

A world tour for 2020 were shelved due to Covid, and then the bombshell: the rescheduled dates were pulled altogether. Mike Patton was beset with agoraphobia following so long locked up indoors. My own mental health issues reared their ugly head during the pandemic and here were my guys, my North Star, dealing with similar hardship. I was a teenager again, seeing the world through Faith No More’s prism.

Over the intervening years, Patton toured with Mr Bungle and the Avett Brothers. The other members of Faith No More remained in the dark, releasing various statements that confirmed an indefinite hiatus. It really looked like the end. Finally, after all these years, it looked like there was too much friction.

Except here they are, back again.

Maybe the talk of indefinite hiatus was a ruse? Maybe the old school provocateurs were teasing us fans throughout all of 2025? They’ve always wound their fanbase up whenever possible, much like I can’t resist teasing The Muse and all of my friends and family.

This is the thing when you don’t fit in, you sometimes struggle to read people. Affection can come across in unusual ways. Being a bit weird, a bit contrary, is just how us oddballs show love. Of course we don’t hate you. We love you. We’re like this because we care. We care a lot.

(It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it.)

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1. Shut up, they’re hallowed to me.

2. Angel Dust was chosen as the album’s title because "it's a really beautiful name for a really hideous drug and that should make people think."

3. The full line up was Soulfly, Motorhead, Faith No More, Soundgarden and Black Sabbath. You will never ever get better bang for your buck than I did that day. This was also, sadly, Soundgarden’s last ever European show before Chris Cornell’s death in 2017.