MIKE PATTON | Dead Cross Interview, New Film Score, New Orchestral Ballads Record.

Mike Patton and Dave Lomabrdo have spoken to Rolling Stone about the Dead Cross album, released August 4th via Ipecac.


Dave Lombardo on how the record came about.

 "My assistant said, 'Dave, why don't you just call your friend, Patton?' I said, 'No, he's busy with Faith No More, and he's doing film work.' I just didn't think of it. But after she was persistent three or four times, I asked him if he'd do it over text, and he said, 'Absolutely. I would love to work on this.' It blew me away. This guy is one of the top 10 vocalists in the world."

Mike Patton elaborated on how he aproached the songs.

"It is very pointed, direct and visceral. Like, I wasn't going to play keyboards, add samples or any kind of orchestration. It was like, 'Yo, just go for it.' In some ways, it reminded me of stuff that we had collectively all grown up with and loved when we were like teenagers – bands like the Accüsed, Deep Wound or Siege, stuff that was just brutal, uncompromising and right to the point. I was listening to all those bands again before this came to be, so it was already back infused in my blood. And now I got a chance to do a pencil-in-your-eye record."

Grave Slave



Patton on the lyrics to this song.

"I was like, 'This could be about a gunslinger or drug dealer at the border – a cartel.  The other guys in the band come from Southern California, and I've spent a lot of time in San Diego, so pistoleros are a part of our lives. It's a huge point of contention with our new president, so I thought it was a cool topic."

Lombardo revealed album will also feature a cover Bauhaus' Bela Lugosi's Dead.

"When we started, we realized we only had 20 minutes of music. Justin suggested 'Bela Lugosi,' because it was a little longer, mid-paced song to break up the chaos." 

More Patton Projects

Patton also talked about some other projects he's been working on. A film score for a Netflix movie called 1922 based on a Stephen King novella ("It's more haunting and Hitchcock-y than you might thing," he says), and he has been collaborating with onetime Serge Gainsbourg collaborator, composer and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier, on an album of orchestral ballads. "It's very, very lush," he says. "I'm doing a lot of crooning in different languages, and the instrumentation is all over the map." And will it contain Gainsbourg's famous dirty lyrics? "There are plenty of those, don't worry," he says. "They just don't sound so sexy in English." 

On Faith No More 

Faith No More, he says, are an "open-ended book," so "if something happens, you're pleasantly surprised."

FULL ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW HERE