Bill Gould speaks to For Bass Players Only
An interesting video interview from Bill for For Bass Players Only in which he speaks about starting playing and especially his partnership with Mike Bordin.
(via @fnm4ever)
Metal Hammer cover
What a cover! Faith No More will again grace the cover of Metal Hammer for its new issue which goes on sale on Tuesday.
.@FaithNoMore are the cover stars of the new issue of Metal Hammer! In stores this Tuesday – BE THERE! pic.twitter.com/fvJGy0fMiM
— Metal Hammer (@MetalHammer) May 22, 2015
We’ll have details on the story when it is published.
Maor Applebaum on Sol Invictus
PMC speakers have put out a media release featuring some interesting quotes from Maor Appelbaum, who mastered the album:
Mastering engineer and musician Maor Appelbaum says the clarity delivered by his PMC monitors helped make a complex project much faster and more enjoyable.
“Sol Invictus is a collection of very different songs that work like scene changes within a movie,” he explains. “While each song has to work on its own, it also needs to work as part of the whole project.
“In order to achieve a cohesive effect, I used quite a big mastering set up, which included two analogue compressors, two analogue EQs and various digital compressors, limiters and de-essers. The monitoring was critical and I was very pleased with the clarity and precision of my PMC speakers, especially when I was playing tracks at high volume. They give incredibly detailed sound, which makes the reviewing process much faster – and they are not fatiguing at all so, if I need to, I can spend longer in front of them without feeling tired.”
Classic Rock gives rave review for Faith No More at Wiltern
We’ve been concentrating only on album reviews lately but here’s an excellent live review from Classic Rock/Metal Hammer/Team Rock:
Frontman Mike Patton is wearing some sort of bondage harness that tugs at his nostrils and cheeks, contorting his face. And they open with a new song entitled Motherfucker, slow building and weirder than a furries convention on acid. They follow that with the colossal From Out Of Nowhere. So much for magic and madness.
…If there’s a complaint it’s that the Wiltern always sounds muffled, with excellent views of the backs of peoples’ heads, but even that is solved when the entire crowd sings along to Midlife Crisis. Not known to be easily impressed, Patton gives a nod of approval, acknowledging one of those special nights, and perhaps that we’d forgotten Faith No More could be so good. We won’t forget again in a hurry.
Metal Hammer Hungary feature
This is a great in-depth feature in the Hungarian version of Metal Hammer from Faith No More fan Máté Sándor. Here is Máté’s own summary in English. (Thanks Máté):
“I try to analyse the music, the artwork of the album, and the meaning of some lyrics. How I see this great masterpiece. I write about that its not to easy make a new album after 18 years, but Faith No More give a fantastic answer to the doubters. The title of the article is Sunshine from the Grave. I analyse every song. Mike Patton said in a Chilean interview: when he makes music, its like he’s watching a movie. And if he watches a movie, its like he hearing some music. So that’s why I wrote about my visual vision about Sol Invictus songs. I analyse the marketing strategy, and the potential continuation in the future.”
Diffuser ranks Faith No More’s albums
We’ll come back to this in a separate post but here’s Diffuser’s very readable ranking of Faith No More’s seven albums from worst to first. Not the high placing for Sol Invictus.
Distorted Sound review
UK rock and metal site Distorted Sound has given Sol Invictus a 9/10 review. They conclude:
“Matador, one of the finest tracks to be on Sol Invictus and one of the most ambitious that the band have written to date. Chilling, funky, everything in between, and everything you can expect and want from a FAITH NO MORE track.
A stunning closure to the beginning of FAITH NO MORE’s return, From the Dead sets the perfect feeling for a track that leaves everyone remembering exactly what it was they missed about this band and why Sol Invictus is more than just a comeback record, it is the sort of past that none of us mind digging up.
With excellent experimentation, superb vocals, beautiful music and incredible production, Sol Invictus is the perfect way to walk back into a room and remember that some things, we should not let go of and FAITH NO MORE is one of them.”
Oooh glad to see IY get some love!! Angel Dust will allways be my number one, but IY is a pretty close second to me. Dont think ill ever grow tired of that album. Such powerfull songwriting and just amazing how every instrument in songs like CA has their own very distinct role to play. I like the genre-hopping of AD and KFAD but IY is wonderfully focused. Also i seem to have noticed that the Chuck-era songs in general is some of the ones that make Patton go the most nuts when played live (back when he did go nuts on stage :/ …) like the outro to CA…
So anyway my list would be:
1 AD
2 IY
3 KFAD/SI
4 the fairly unknown AOTY mini ep containing only : Pristina, Stripsearch,
5 WCAL/TRT
@benrun Oh shit! Terrible omission by me.
Benrun, loved reading your timeline and it’s good to see someone ranking IY as high as I do! I only discovered FNM sometime around 2008 (it could hardly have happened earlier than that, I was born the year AD was released :)) and for a long time I was only listening to the four albums with Patton. I always knew two other albums existed, but for some weird reason never bothered to actually listen to them in full until maybe 3 years ago. It was a pretty stupid thing to do, especially considering how badly I fell in love with IY the first time I listened to it. It’s such a brilliant and solid album, so many things to love about it! Just like SI, indeed.
Thanks Ty, I don’t feel so alone! Last night I laid in the dark and listened to IY and SI again…I feel pretty confident my list will stay the same for awhile. A big part of IY for me is how great the guitar parts are, the little nuances he squeezed in to RNR, Faster Disco, that solo totally takes Anne’s Song to another level…I think the guitars on TRT get a little too much attention as compared to IY. Also, Chuck’s vocals on that album…I really think he gets everything he can out of himself (for that time…he found some new ability in Cement). The growls, the scream/singing, the shrieks, the animal noises, etc…all of it is sung like his life depended upon it, nothing held back. I know the tonality can be off putting but I hear the same from people who don’t like Patton. I work with some kids with congenital craniofacial anomalies sometimes and I met this one girl who was a singer…she’d never be thought of by most as having a good tone, but watching someone sing with everything they have moves me more than listening to a great voice…just an example, I personally think Chuck sounds amazing here. Plus IY and SI really remind me of each other a lot. There was that great Blood/Rise of the Fall mashup that someone on here did, Death March and Cone both close out side A in a similar way…the both point a direction and just take off, Crab Song and Matador both start slow with a great payoff, the gothic sounds but dark and humorous themes…then there are a lot of sun references (SI, SSU, Superhero, FTD…FD, RNR, Spirit).
IY is almost above KFAD for me! It really doesn’t have too many weaknesses , I mean any album that has Faster Disco, the magnificent Chinese Arithmetic and The Crab Song can’t be anything but brilliant.
Eric…good list…they’re all good lists, every album could be the best! But…you’ve left something out! Ahem, ahem…
I rank the albums in which I discovered the band, so
The Real Thing
Introduce Yourself
Angel Dust
We Care A Lot
King for a Day
Album of the Year
Sol Invictus
But the best album is really KFAD.
My list:
1. KFAD, 2. A.D. 3.SI (might move up to two though), 4.AOTY, 5. WCAL, 6.TRT
Having said that I love TRT…
Ty, those AOTY songs happen to be the Patton songs. I love the surf guitar and the enthusiasm and such, but the Patton songs, just like Gentle Art and others are fairly stripped of melody as we know it and what makes me miss Roddy’s presence on those last 2 albums. Yeah, AOTY is a little frustrating that way…I adore Pristina and Helpless especially. For me really, any 1 of their albums can be argued as their best, which is why I didn’t really go after the article’s choices, it was more their reasoning…I just really didn’t like them thinking it was EASY to rank KFAD so low. If I could step outside myself and my FNM love for a moment and just think about musicianship and vocal performance, then I’d have to pick KFAD as their best album. My personal favorites is a different thing. Here’s how my personal favorite list would look throughout my life:
1987 – 1. IY…although I got it on a blank cassette from someone else who didn’t know what it was…I didn’t figure out who is was until 1989, so then…
1989 – 1. IY 2. TRT
1990 – Holy shit! IY is their 2nd album?? I found a WCAL cassette in a music store! New list – 1. IY 2. TRT 3. WCAL.
1992 – The day AD was released…buy then TRT had grown more on me and AD was not TRT part 2, so…1. TRT 2. IY 3. WCAL 4. AD…you bastards!!!
1992 – about 5 hours later, NEVER MIND THAT EARLIER LIST!! 1. AD 2. TRT 3. IY 4. WCAL
1995 – 1. AD 2. IY (crept back up…more timeless than TRT to my ears) 3. KFAD 4. WCAL (again more timeless and amazing songs on here) 5. TRT …still love and listen to it all the time, but suffers from production and nasality and too much semi-boring guitar
1997 – 1. IY (retakes the top spot…it’s just wonderful start to finish with 5 people giving all they have) 2. KFAD (this album just makes me focus and get shit done…my constant college exam study album) 3. AD 4. AOTY 5. WCAL 6. TRT
Somewhere throughout the post-FNM years AOTY rises and falls again in the ranks, AD and KFAD trade places a few times…then going into 2015… 1. IY 2. AD (AD is mostly missing a solid guitarist but has a lot of Roddy) 3. KFAD (missing Roddy but has a solid guitarist…which means for me Roddy is more important than whatever guitarist they have on the album…FNM needs his touch to be great) 4. AOTY 5. WCAL 6. TRT.
2015, today – it’s too damn hard and just too early! But this minute…1. IY 2. SI 3. AD 4. KFAD 5. AOTY 6. WCAL 7. TRT. Rationale…IY and SI have wall to wall good songs, no filler, and each with all members present and giving their all (well SI has some Roddy-less songs but I still feel the presence of melody and beauty). But IY is just more fun while still being pretty damn dark, and what would life be without a little fun? But like I said, I don’t feel good about knocking down AD and KFAD just b/c they have extra (all excellent also) songs that maybe make the album lose a little focus. A better, more challenging question is if any SI songs crack my top 10.
Bill Gould…maybe my favorite human ever 🙂
My list would be:
1.KFAD
2.Angel Dust
3.The real Thing
4.Sol Invictus
5.AOTY
6.IY
7.WCAL
KFAD will always be the one for me, close to AD. TRT was my first contact with FNM, I will never forget how excited I was.
Those rankings aren’t that far off my list.
1. Angel Dust
2. Sol Invictus
3. The Real Thing
4. KFAD
5. Introduce Yourself
6. Album Of The Year
7. WCAL
The first three are extremely close then a slight gap with the next three also very interchangeable . If AOTY had more ATA and LCOS then it would almost be their best but unfortunately other than Paths of Glory, Helpless and Pristina , it doesn’t quite get there. I am not a fan of Naked.., Got That Feeling or even Home Sick Home. But the new album is just like fungus that grows and grows!
Regarding the Diffuser ranking…it’s probably how most of the world of casual-plus fans would rank the albums. As more of a rabid fan here’s what I take exception to: 1) WCAL completely sounds like FNM to me…according to this reviewer I have incredibly astute ears for thinking that…I think he’s complimenting people like me too much with that one. 2) He makes it sound easy to rank KFAD so low on his list…I know many people may put it that low, but it wouldn’t be an easy choice for most people who check out FNM sites. 3) There is a Patton-centered approach to the whole thing…ranking SI higher than TRT apparently only b/c Patton had more influence on the music thereby making it better (never mentioning Billy who primarily wrote the music). I hate Patton fanboys almost as much as I love Patton. Honorable mention is suggesting that fans were for the most part unimpressed upon the release of AOTY…I don’t quite remember it that way.
where the bloody hell can i buy metal hammer, save a large wh smiths? searched their site desperately, have no idea.
Great interview with Billy here…. I liked his comments about how he and Puffy developed the rhythm section together back in the day. Also, how he fell into playing the bass just by hanging out with his friends, riding bikes. It seems like the bass picked him to play it. Also great how he only worked at minimum wage jobs and was bad at them. He can’t even imagine doing something else with his life.