A decade ago on March 23rd 2015 Faith No More released Superhero as the second single from Sol Invictus on 7” vinyl.
'Superhero chucks machine-gun drums, tightly coiled basslines, pianos and a widdling guitar into the crusty San Francisco quintet's arenas cement mixer. The pick of 47-year-old singer Mike Patton's growled lines is "Ain't no grave gonna keep this body down".' NME
As American fireworks lit up the sky in celebration of Independence Day across the pond the UK lit up the sky with a different kind of firework for fans of FNM - two brand new songs!
July 4th 2014, at British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park London, FNM were back after two year’s absence from the stage. Dressed as priests they walked out to Mike Oldfield’s Exorcist Theme. The set compromised of a short greatest hits selection after which Mike Patton became possessed by the persona of Father Karras and threw holy water at the feverish crowd…
‘Power of Christ compels you! Power of Christ compels you! That's all I got. Your mother sucks cocks in hell!’
Faith No More then launched into the deep groove of Superhero for the very first time.
'On Super Hero, there are a lot more layers. It has a lot of energy; it's driving and forceful. To me, that's what Faith No More should sound like.' - Roddy Bottum | Oc Weekly | 2015
It wasn’t long before it was clear that FNM were in the studio and a new album was in the works. Four months later and FNM released Motherfucker, their first single in sixteen years, with a surprise close quarter performance at Amoeba Records in their own neighbourhood of San Francisco. One of the five songs played was Superhero.
In January 2015 camp Faith No More announced Superhero would be their follow-up single, and in May their long-awaited seventh studio album Sol Invictus would be released.
The studio version of Superhero was revealed on March 2nd via Marvel and the Radio 1 Rock Show. Bill Gould, spokesman for FNM, was interviewed by both.
“‘Superhero’ actually just started from the sound of the song, where it has these pounding drums and… throbbing kind of pulse, and we just called it the ‘Superhero’ song. Because, a lot of the ways we write we visualize things,” Gould, a lifelong Silver Surfer fan, said. “While we write music we’re talking about chord changes and different things like that. What we do is we describe scenes together, and we can visualize the scene and the music kind of comes.
“We kind of make movie scenes for movies that don’t exist,” added Gould. “‘Superhero’ was one of those where it was definitely a superhero comic. That was just the vibe of the song, and when [Faith No More singer] Mike [Patton] came to me writing words about it, we were already calling it ‘Superhero.’ So it’s kind of like in the DNA; it’s a comic strip.”
The vinyl was scheduled for release on March 17th, however adverse weather meant production was postponed and the single was instead released on 23rd March, 2015.
"It seems that crazy weather that hit the East coast the past few weeks, closed down the production plants for several days and delayed the Faith No More Superhero seven-inch just a bit. It will now be in stores on Monday March 23rd. We truly appreciate your support and understanding!" - Ipecac Recordings
The song was mixed by Bill and Matt Wallace and mastered by Maor Applebaum.
The B-side was the Battaglia remix by Alexander Hacke, also available as a bonus track on the Japanese edition of Sol Invictus.
An unofficial SouthPark styled video was endorsed by FNM, directed by Rafael Barros.