Faith No More cooking under pressure
Adrianne Stone
If there were an award for the most mismatched group of individuals, San Francisco's Faith No More would certainly win hands down.
When frizzy-haired, bellbottomed metal guitarist Jim Martin shares the stage with classically trained kamikaze keyboardist Roddy Bottum,dreadlocked, reggae-inspired drummer Mike Bordin, punk-oriented bassist Billy Gould and hyperkinetic, baby-faced vocalist Mike Patton, it's a wonder this motley mishmash of maniacs could agree on anything long enough to create the sort of progressive metal-rap-jazz-funk amalgam they ve virtually spearheaded into a movement.
So it should come as no shock that they hate each other.
"All those little tensions going on," Patton admits with a gleeful giggle. "It's beautiful."
Yet it's these diametrically opposed personal tastes which fuel the creative process. "We're all really stubborn, the 22-year old singer admits matter of-factly, "but we let each other do musically what each one wants to do. So it's like having five totally different idiots singing at the same time, and every once in a while it sounds okay."
Actually, that's a gross understatement. Their latest album, The Real Thing, has been lauded by fans and industry alike as one of the most original, varied collections of music to come down the pike in ages. Unafraid to display emotion, they segue with ease from cleverly penned introductory stanzas to crunching molten rock, unexpectedly veering into the throaty voiced tension of a cabaret-styled tune so real you could practically smell the smoke-filled club. The band just never ceases to surprise.
Live, the five-piece regales their audience with high-energy hoopla that includes everything from stage diving to reciting the ever-popular Nestles chocolate theme.
"Ive always been in a band environment where anything is okay," shrugs Patton. "We did the Nestle's song in England and nobody knew what we were doing. We just went, 'Don't you people eat chocolate?'
If those British folks had been watching our "telly," they'd not only know the candy carol by heart, they'd be equally familiar with the FNM video "Epic," enjoying heavy airplay on MTV. The mini-flick features a sneaker-stomping Patton and company in between vivid special effects. Roddy completes the clip with an explosive piano solo previously unheard of in hard rock. Perhaps most riveting, however, is footage of a fish flip-flopping on a bare floor, its gills gasping desperately for air. Ironically, the novel clip captures what Faith No More is all about.. .just a bizarre bunch of fish out of water.
Comments