Faith No More: Angel Dust

Faith No More: Angel Dust

1992

Slash Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Da Track Listin': 1. Land of Sunshine  2. Caffeine  3. Midlife Crisis  4. RV  5. Smaller and Smaller  6.  Everything's Ruined  7. Malpractice  8. Kindergarten  9. Be Aggressive  10. A Smaller Victory  11. Crack Hitler  12. Jizzlobber  13. Midnight Cowboy



Lots of fond memories of this one too. I remember picking up the tape of this during the summer of '92. This was the summer I went to Driver's Ed and hung out with my friend Tony drawing comics all day, every day.  Tons of good memories here.

I also remember this as the point where my tastes started to diverge from other people. Prior to this, I listened to a lot of metal but my opinion seemed to match everyone else I knew. When I picked up "Angel Dust" I was floored by its diversity and brilliance. It was so dark, yet beautiful. Mysterious yet specific. A mystical fantasy world inhabited by the same crackheads and hillbillies that also populated the world I inhibited. Kindergarten was no longer the stone and mortar building down the road, it was now a mist-enshrouded ghost-world. A spectral swirl of vague memories.

Of course I loved it and recommended it to everyone I knew. Imagine my surprise when folks started telling me, "Man, that album really sucks."

Wha-whut? Most people I knew seemed to vastly prefer "The Real Thing" to "Angel Dust."  This stands out as the first time I became aware that people interested in the same genre could come to wildly different conclusions after hearing the same record. In retrospect, I think what I was viewing was a bit of a cultural shift. I eventually noticed those that hated "Angel Dust" were older than me and the ones who loved it were my age or younger. This was when the 90's Alternative Nation thing started to really take hold, so I think this was a reflection of this. Older rock fans were more into Jackyl or something...

But yea. All traces of hair metal are gone and the remaining funk bears little resemblance to the neon-hued late 80's-early 90's funk/metal scene. "Be Aggressive," "Midlife Crisis" and "Crack Hitler" are all funky as hell and are definitely steeped in metal, but none of them are funk/metal as it existed before. Most surprising are the extreme metal touches in "Caffeine" and "Jizzlobber" (one of my favorite Patton-era FNM tracks. A great claustrophobic epic, if those two words make any sense together) where Patton gets to stretch a bit and explore some of the harsher vocal techniques that were popping up in death metal at the time. In an earlier post, I referred to Patton as more of a vocal actor than a stereotypical "rock singer" and this album features many of his most memorable performances. From the whitetrash grunts and the velvet Elvis-isms of "RV" to the old witch voice he uses on "Smaller and Smaller."  This whole album is just a gorgeous, disturbing  widescreen film (possibly directed by David Lynch or somebody of that ilk).

And for no reason, the album ends on a cover of the "Midnight Cowboy" theme which somehow seems to be the only logical choice...It's such a bizarre move, but you can't imagine it ending any other way...That's how you know a band is in the zone. When every off the cuff move turns out to be the best possible choice.

To this day, I still don't think Faith No More ever came close to really topping this album (unless you count the EP that followed shortly after, which I'll get to soon). Every album they've done after this has been enjoyable but they were rarely capable of capturing the dark grandeur of "Angel Dust." Was it Jim Martin's departure shortly after this? I don't know. It might have been. In retrospect it seems he was so at odds with the rest of the band's look and sound. You can hear it in his guitar playing on this album. Jim seems to be using an 80's metal lead style, but since this was no longer 80's metal, the subsequent shapes these guitar figures took turned out really interesting ("A Small Victory" is probably the best example of this.) It's hard to say what happened. I don't think it's the failing of the subsequent material, per se, but the band just capturing a magic moment here...

Let's listen to some music. Here's "Jizzlobber " by Faith No More. Enjoy...