FAITH NO MORE | 25.11.1992 | Brixton Academy

Kerrang | December 1992 

Brixton Academy November 25th

L7 ARE chucked on stage unnecessarily early, thus ensuring that a large number of people who've looked forward to seeing them miss a lot of the set. Once inside, you find there's rather a lot of tampon-throwing going on. It seems that ever since Donita Sparks hurled one at the audience, they've been lobbing them back. And, of course, L7 are still playing their bollocks off, pumping out those rough-edged, bottom-kicking tunes. But L7, despite saying they don't want to be known as just a girlie rock band, pumping into the excellent 'Pretend We're Dead' and Donita suggests, in reference to her fanny-showing antics on 'The Word', that we all lower our trousers. Then the next song is dedicated to "all tampon-throwing sisters in the audience!".

It is quite amusing, but L7 have enough good songs to do without all that.

There is a glitterball above the stage and the hideous sounds of Europe's 'The Final Countdown' come parping from the PA. Faith No More are in jolly jape mode, but after that there is very little of the usual sodding about we've come to expect over the past few years.

Last time, their set didn't really work because no one knew any of the songs from 'Angel Dust', but this time those tunes are greeted with almost as much enthusiasm as the old stuff. Almost - but not quite. This is not the usual FNM crowd; there are a lot of new fans, and many of them would be equally happy with a regular pop band. Thankfully, Faith No More seem more than aware of this, and at times it's difficult to tell if the big production, horrible lighting and a very serious rendition of, 'Easy Like Sunday Morning', yes know they've done it before isn't just a piss-take, Faith No More sounded damn near perfect, but because of their new-found fame and the audience that goes with it, there wasn't the same crazy spark of energy that there used to be. The fact that they open the encore with 'Everything's Ruined' is appropriate in same ways, but they have one last ace up their sleeves with the Dead Kennedys' 'Let's Lynch The Landlord', before leaving us with a very abrupt Death Metal racket. Faith No More are not, after all, some stupid pop band. You don't find lunatics like Mike Patton in Bros!