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Faith No More are (from far left) Mike Bordin, Mike Patton, Roddy Bottum, Billy Gould and Jon Hudson. Photo: Dustin Rabin

Faith No More rockers find renewed belief in themselves

Band that reunited in 2009 for a world tour decided they'd better write some new songs if they were going to stay together

LAT

When Faith No More took to the stage in Los Angeles for the first of three concerts last month, they didn't warm up the crowd with old hits. Instead, the reunited hard-rock band opened with a new song from an album yet to come out; what's more, the tune featured keyboardist Roddy Bottum on vocals rather than frontman Mike Patton.

Oh, and the song's title - well, it isn't printable here. "The choice was a bit unorthodox but I think it set a tone," Bottum says. A slow-building dirge about smallpox blankets and a cup made of bones, the song - also the first track released from , Faith No More's first album since 1997 - indeed underscored that this famously antagonistic outfit hadn't lost their contrarian streak. (Ditto the band's stage set-up, where they performed amid elaborate floral arrangements that were hardly in keeping with hard-rock aesthetics.)

Twenty-five years ago, that taste for provocation made unlikely MTV stars out of Patton and his bandmates, beginning with , the left-field 1990 hit with the music video featuring a flopping fish out of water and an exploding piano. Faith No More went on to record a deranged prog-metal masterpiece in 1992's only to follow that with a straight-faced cover of the Commodores' velvety R&B hit - proudly unpredictable moves that influenced young acts such as System of a Down and Deftones.

Mike Patton on stage in Detroit last month. Photo: Zuma Press

But if the group are still tweaking expectations today, the world around it has changed significantly. Where Faith No More once defined itself in opposition to a rock mainstream it viewed as a kind of macho wasteland, that mainstream has now all but disappeared. And the rock bands that do matter - Muse, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age - originated on the same fringes Faith No More did.

For a group of self-styled misfits, then, what does it mean to no longer look like rebels? "It means we're just us now," says bassist Bill Gould. "And that's a good thing. It means we can do anything we want."

Gathered with Patton and Bottum for coffee in West Hollywood the day after the show, the bassist acknowledges that Faith No More used to draw a great deal of energy from happily pushing back against others' ideas of what they should sound like and how they should behave - an effective tactic for musicians as varied as the Sex Pistols and Britney Spears. "But it's not the only way," Gould says.

These days, Patton adds: "We don't have to think about being different anymore. Wherever inspiration leads us, that's OK."

You can hear that freedom on , released this month on the group's Reclamation Recordings. Though it's full of unexpected twists - the country-tinged , for instance, and the funky wah-wah break in - the album doesn't make a big deal about its eccentricities; it's not trying to impress you with its weirdness the way Faith No More's earlier work sometimes seemed to be doing.

"Laid-back" definitely isn't the way to describe a record that includes the rumbling and , a shouty goth-metal jam. But like - the strong comeback record just released by another important alternative-era band, Blur - has a certain calm to it, a confident precision that could be the result of its long gestation.

Formed in the early 1980s in San Francisco by Gould, Bottum and drummer Mike Bordin, Faith No More toiled for years in the underground, cycling through various singers and guitarists, and eventually scoring a minor hit with , featuring Chuck Mosley on vocals. In 1989, Patton replaced Mosley, expanding the band's sound (as well as its proto-grunge sex appeal). , Faith No More's first album with Patton, went platinum, and other successes followed across three more studio albums. By 1998, though, the members were burned out and called it quits.

Everyone stayed busy over the decade to come: Bottum played with his indie-pop band Imperial Teen; Bordin toured as Ozzy Osbourne's drummer; Patton ran his adventurous record label Ipecac and collaborated with everyone from Dan the Automator to John Zorn. But in 2009, encouraged by a positive meet-up at Bottum's wedding in Los Angeles, the band (including final guitarist Jon Hudson) reconvened for a world tour that ended up lasting three years.

I think the music shows that. There’s some space in it. It sounds like people stepping back and letting it breathe a little bit
RODDY BOTTUM, KEYBOARDIST, ABOUT RECORDING THE LATEST ALBUM

Today Gould insists the band weren't looking to satisfy fans' nostalgia with the reunion shows. "It was more about us reconnecting with one another," he says.

Still, with only old songs to play, a feeling of stasis ultimately settled over the group. "You can only play stuff from 20 or 30 years ago for so long," Patton says.

If Faith No More were to go on, the members decided, they needed new material. So work commenced at Gould's studio in Oakland, California, each man bringing in songs and parts of songs that cohered with surprising ease. The process was more open and collaborative than it had been in the '90s, according to Bottum; people were less protective of their parts.

"And I think the music shows that," the keyboardist says. "There's some space in it. It sounds like people stepping back and letting it breathe a little bit."

That feeling has extended to the road, says Patton, who describes the band's recent shows - in which Faith No More have been playing a good-sized chunk of - as more "fresh" than those in the last go-round. (The group will spend much of the summer on the European festival circuit before returning to the US for headlining shows including a gig in August at New York's Madison Square Garden.)

"I know that's a weird word to use after so many years," Patton says with a laugh. "How about 'defrosted'?" Gould offers, then says he feels the same way. "There was a kind of weight before, and now it's all coming more easily."

At the Wiltern, the band took obvious pleasure in performing its new tunes, particularly the ominous title track from , which Bottum introduced by telling the crowd to forget everything they had heard from the group and to "begin again".

Yet Faith No More also came alive in an affectionate cover of , the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song, and a retooled version of their 1992 hit that morphed into Boz Scaggs' white-soul classic .

Those easy-breezy selections were, of course, providing a jolt of perversity before an audience filled with aggressive haircuts and black leather jackets. But it's worth noting that the band played the heck out of the songs; they weren't included just to rile anybody up.

"I got a text from a friend this morning, a guy that I really trust," Patton says the day after the concert. "He goes, 'Best part of the show was Boz Scaggs'. It's a good song. I appreciated that."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Road to redemption
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