Faith No More: King for a Day...Fool for a Lifetime

Faith No More: King for a Day...Fool for a Lifetime

1995

Slash Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Get Out  2. Ricochet  3. Evidence  4. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies  5. Star A.D.  6. Cuckoo for Caca  7. Caralho Voador  8. Ugly in the Morning  9. Digging the Grave  10. Take This Bottle  11. King for a Day  12. What a Day  13. The Last to Know  14. Just a Man



Good album. I'm trying to pinpoint why I don't rate this as high as "Angel Dust." For one, the intriguing sense of mystery (to me, their biggest draw) is mostly missing.  Is it the absence of the square peg/round hole quality of Jim Martin's guitars? The radical downplaying of Roddy Bottum's keyboards? To me, that old sense of swirling mystery is only recognizable in the understated funk of "Evidence" or the title-track's off-kilter verses.

The album can sorta be broken down into two categories. Surprisingly straightforward hard & ugly alt-rock ("Get Out," "Ricochet," "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies," "Cuckoo for Caca," "Ugly in the Morning," "Digging the Grave," and "What a Day") and quasi-humorous genre experiments (the remainder of the album).  The brand of heavy alt-rock they pioneer here is really interesting and foreshadows a lot of the nu-metal that would come around a few years later and stink up the joint. It seemed really fresh at the time and still holds up, but I imagine the spectre of System of a Down or Incubus might be a hurdle to some. But FNM should absolutely NOT be held responsible for what less talented bands did to their sound years down the road.

 The straight rock stuff on here is freakin' fantastic for the most part. Particularly "Digging the Grave," which practically punched its way out of radio speakers when it first came out. There was something about a single getting airplay back then that didn't have an instrumental intro for some DJ to jabber over. One second, Collective Soul's "Gel" is lazily, mindlessly yarling and then POW! Mike Patton is doing his deep cartoonish crooning over some of the punchiest rock ever. The lack of warning was truly impactful for those who heard it in its original context.

The band also hits some real gold in the "genre experiment" category as well. For every "Star A.D." or "Caralho Voador" (read: Songs I don't give a fuck about) there's some truly fantastic stuff like the genuinely moving country weeper "Take This Bottle" which humanizes the cartoonish redneck in "RV" and "Just a Man" which is one of my all-time favorite FNM songs. Seriously. It starts as an impish small-scale song where Patton looks at the sky contemplating insignificance but by the time the song ends, it's a full-scale Vegas production. I'm moved in the most obvious, cheesy way possible. I get glitter in my eyes just thinking about it (the profound spoken word section is just the icing on the cake).

Almost every song on here (there are maybe 3 I don't care for) is great. But they just don't come together in any meaningful way like they did on "Angel Dust," where all the diverse elements congealed into an especially intriguing dark matter. As a result, the album comes across like oil and water. The straight-forward rockers not spilling their outright aggression into the genre experiments, which in turn don't spill their fun and inventiveness into the rockers. It feels like two separate EP's programmed into one CD with the track listings all shuffled...Still recommended though, since I'd say this is the last album where FNM were truly and fully in their prime...

Let's listen to some music...Here's "Just a Man." Enjoy....