SOL INVICTUS | Visions Album Review

We are being spoilt with FAITH NO MORE 'Sol Invictus' reviews.


Whether you want to read them or not, it's fantastic that the new album is attracting such vast interest. Our partners in crime FNM 2.0 have posted every review so far as it has landed. Read them HERE.

Here is yet another review from German VISIONS Magazine, voted record of the month. Thanks to Mira Toybear for the translation.


As if they were never gone. The 1^st album of FNM after 18 years is a successful comeback, eccentric and eclectic as ever – the definition of crossover. Crossover, what’s that again? A term meaning everything and nothing, used basically for bands or artists embedding various musical styles that normally wouldn’t go well together. It was used specifically for the combination of rap and rock back then. Rap and rock worked well for FNM, but you could never limit the band from San Francisco to that simple formula. The quintet has always been too eclectic for that – and too eccentric.Sol Invictus impressively proves that FNM still meet those attributes. The band returned from their long break not exactly soft with the first, now half a year old, single ‘Motherfucker’. The present posters and band photos with irritating sado-masochistic details help strengthen FNM’s bizarre and strange image. And now it’s finally reality: a new album of the band around uber-singer Mike Patton. In fact FNM are the only band out of all those nineties-alternative-veterans you never had to fear they could disgrace themselves with another recording. On the one hand they took their time, 18 years that is since ‘album of the year’, on the other hand they waited until they had enough suitable songs.10 songs – and they’re suited! In spite of or actually due to the fact that FNM remain essentially unchanged. You still can’t nail them at all. The style of a song might change within a split second, Patton’s timbre might change drastically. The title song – you may use the image of the ‘undefeated sun’ to describe the band itself – receives the listener with a calm, nobly sounding piano to then make room for the first highlight. ‘Superhero’, which the band had already played at some reunion shows, is a trademark-song. A bit of ‘Midlife Crisis’ here, a bit of ‘Digging the grave’ and a five-minute monster, sounding renowned but incredibly fresh, is ready. By now you’ve got almost everything you could’ve hoped for from FNM. But there’s of course more to come. ‘Sunny side up’ for example is changing from lounge-sound to intensification including a nagging Patton.On ‘Sol Invictus’ FNM called up the whole repertoire of their skills. It’s the most homogenously heterogenous album you could wish for from a rock band, stylistic border experiences inclusive. The pre-released ‘Motherfucker’ is one of the best examples for this, before the album returns to ‘Midlife Crisis’ with the epic ‘Matador’, and once the battle is won rides into the sunset with ‘From the Dead’. Crossover is dead, long live Faith No More! (Jan Schwarzkampf; VISIONS magazine, 05/2015) Other opinions:

• ‘Sol Invictus’ is no uber-album, but a convincing, hidden best-of: explosive ‘Caffeine’-crossover, elegiac singing, disturbing weirdo-moments – gilded by an unleashed Mike Patton working his way through the album. 18 years after the split the record sounds as fresh as you could only expect from these forever stubborn lateral thinkers. (Dennis Drögemüller)

 

• For years Mike Patton has proved with one insane project after the other that he can very well deal without his old band. And then after 18 years he reminds you within the first 2.30mins of ‘Sol Invictus’ how much you missed him as frontman of FNM. A triumph. (Florian Schneider)

 

 

FAITH NO MORE are on the cover of the latest issue of Visions buy your copy HERE.