Faith No More Followers 2017 Review

2017 sucked for Faith no more fans!

Since Faith No More's reformation in 2009 there have only been two years in which they have publicly remained inactive, 2013 and 2017. This is largely because in these particular years the band members were busy with other projects. 2013 was a Tomahawk year and 2017 turned out to be a Dead Cross year! Both were great years for Mike Patton fans but they have kinda sucked for fans of FNM.

This could however be encouraging to FNM's followers rather than disheartening, in 2013 the core members of the band were writing what would be their long awaited comeback album Sol Invictus. It is true that in September Patton exclaimed to Full Metal Jackie that FNM were on an 'extended break', and he expressed little hope for the future of the band. Yet at the end of November Roddy Bottum shared a photo via Instagram of himself, Bill Gould and Mike Bordin outside Koolarrow Studios in Oakland CA (where Sol Invictus was recorded), the core of the band, it's three founding members.....could this be evidence that we might be hearing from FNM soon? We only speculate but it looks promising.

This year has witnessed some amazing work from Roddy, Bill and Patton.

Roddy successfully exported Sasquatch The Opera to the UK for a month of performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, he tried his acting skills in a yet unreleased film called Tyrel by Chilean director Sebastian Silva and reunited with Imperial Teen. 

Bill translated his skills as a producer from music to film with the yet unreleased indie film Rockabul and performed live with Como Asesinar a Felipes for their 10th anniversary shows in Chile.

Patton continued to be omnipresent releasing his most brutal album in years with Dave Lombardo, Michael Crain and Justin Pearson aka Dead Cross, this led to a North American tour. He also provided the soundtrack to the film 1922 based on a Stephen King novella. 

There was very little to celebrate from the combined members of FNM and the ultimate reason that 2017 sucked for FNM fans is that we lost Chuck Mosley, who passed away on November 9th. 

Here are the important events of 2017 month by month.

January

• 95.5 KLOS show The Session dissected Faith No More's Epic. A track-by-track, channel-by-channel analysis of the song  instrument by instrument. The show was captured on Youtube by Patton Fanatic. 

• Mike Patton and Anthony Pateras performed for the first time as tētēma at Mona Foma festival in Tasmania on January 21st. Full review HERE. 

February

• Faith No More teamed up with Sonarworks to present a revolutionary new audio format called True-fi. Is was an opportunity to hear the song Cone Of Shame on headphones exactly if you were in the studio with band. Read More HERE

March

• Mike Patton and John Kaada released a video to accompany the song Red Rainbow taken from 2016's Bacteria Cult. The video is based on the animated short film The Absence Of Eddy Table directed by Rune Spaans. Read more HERE.

• On March 3rd Mike Patton joined his friends Max and Igor Cavalera onstage at Slim's in San Francisco California to perform the song Lookaway, which originally featured Patton and Korn's Jonathan Davis on guest vocals. Read More HERE.

• Secret Chiefs 3 released their new single The System of Antichrist. Read More HERE.

April

• Roddy Bottum and Imperial Teen returned to the live stage on April 8th supporting That Dog at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. Read More HERE.

May

• Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo spoke to Rolling Stone about the Dead Cross album and revealed the song Grave Slave. Full Interview HERE.

"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."

• Mike Bordin interview with music journalist Matt Pinfield, author Steven Blush and Tony Mann.

June

• Dead Cross released the video for the song Seizure and Desist. Described as 'A powder keg of wild tempo changes, rigid, rhythmically-minded riffs and the animated and dynamic vocal efforts of Patton certainly adhere to the “Seizure” portion of the song’s title in convincing fashion.' Read More HERE.

• Fantômas reunited for a one off show at San Bernardino’s Glen Helen Amphitheatre on Saturday June 24th. Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn, Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover (who was covering for Dave Lombardo who was gigging with Suicidal Tendencies) supported Tool and Primus. Read More HERE.

July

• Roddy Bottum talked about his opera writing with Best Line Of Fit. Full Interview HERE.

"I’m a team player, I always have been. I’m a keyboard player and I play well with others. It’s a talent, a gift I’m proud of but it’s also a survival instinct that I had to develop."

• Trevor Dunn recorded an album with Qui.


 

• Bill Gould returned to Chile to perform with Como Asesinar A Felipes. Read More HERE.

• Dead Cross released the video for the song Obedience School. Read More HERE.

August

• Sasquatch The Opera hit the stage at Edinburgh Fringe festival for the month of August. Roddy took part in many interviews. 

"Crazy things happen when you push yourself into something new. It might seem scary at times but embarking on a journey like that is only going to be magical.” - Huck Magazine

 "...that was the really cool thing about Faith No More. It was a really weird mix of people, and I’m glad everyone sorta got their say. So I was able to smuggle blowjobs into storytelling." - The Quietus

•  On August 4th Dead Cross, featuring Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo released their debut album. Read More HERE.

At its heart, Dead Cross is a hardcore record, albeit a hexagonal-shaped one in which the angular complexity inherent to Justin and Mike Crain’s day gigs tightly jigsaw with Dave’s precarious precision. And then there’s Patton, who can write catchy vocal lines to a glass factory implosion, making the jagged lurch of Seizure And Desist and the rickety doom punk of Obedience School flow as smooth as silk whilst sounding the angriest he has in years. - Metal Hammer

• On August 6th Mike Patton was Henry Rollins' guest during broadcast 436 of his radio show on Santa Monica's KCRW (89.9 MHz FM). Read More HERE.

• Dead Cross embark on their first tour with Mike Patton on vocals. Full roundup of the tour HERE 

• Mike Patton suffers a minor accident that causes the band to reschedule a few dates. Read More HERE.

Mike Patton is ok. He is getting stitched up and is raring to go. He thought he could skateboard to the show last night but he suffered a bad wipe out on the way. 

September

• Mike Patton was interviewed by Full Metal Jackie. Read More HERE.

• Dead Cross perform the second leg of their North American Tour. Full tour roundup HERE.

October

• The Netflix film 1922 featuring Mike Patton's score was released. 

November

• The most devastating news of the year, on November 9th Chuck Mosley passed away. Read Tributes HERE. 

• Chilean multi instrumentalist Alain Johannes and Mike Patton produced a song together in a tribute to Connie Converse. Read More HERE.

• Dead Cross released a video for Church Of The Motherfuckers on November 22nd. Read More HERE.

• On November 3rd Primitive Race released their second album Soul Pretender which featured Chuck Mosley on vocals.

• On the 18th of November, Poptech Conference hosted Qais, Travis Beard and Bill Gould, who presented excerpts from the documentary Rockabul and discussed the past present and future of the Afghan youth counter culture movement. Read More HERE.

December

• Secret Chiefs 3 release Danse Macabre Superdeluxe. Read More HERE.

• Mike Patton Joined Dillinger Escape Plan for the first of their final three shows in New York on December 27th. They performed 2002's Irony Is A Dead Scene in its entirety. 

Things to look out for in 2018.

Mike Patton

Dead Cross have announced a handful of European tour dates, Nova Rock Festival in Austria, Download Festival and HellFest in France and at Mexico's Hell & Heaven festival. More dates are expected and we will keep you up to date. There is a possibility of more music from Dead Cross with new songs already played during their recent tour.

The full soundtrack to 1922 is expected to be released via Ipecac sometime this year.

Patton has mentioned an Orchestral Ballad album with Jean-Claude Vannier. 

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

Tomahawk

Duane Denison let slip that a new album is in the works and there have been several photos of the group shared on Instagram. 

"Well, I have a group called Tomahawk that’s working on its fifth album, and I’ve been writing new material for what may be a solo album as well. We’ll see." - Hype Magazine

Roddy Bottum

A new Imperial Teen album has been mentioned several times in 2017, so we hope to see its release this coming year. We also hope to see Roddy's acting skills in the movie Tyrel by Chilean director Sebastian Silva.

Bill Gould

Jared Blum assures us that a new Talking Book record is near completion. And the film Rockabul directed by Travis Beard, produced by Bill should see a nationwide release in 2018.

Chuck Mosley

Chuck spent some time in 2017 recording with Matt Wallace for the first time since 1987. We really hope these recordings are released as a tribute to the sadly missed legend.

FNM 2.0 Book

Adrian Harte is writing a the ultimate Faith No More biography and spent time last year with members of the band in San Francisco. The book will be published by Jawbone Press in September 2018. 


Faith No More

We are hoping that this photo of Bill, Puffy and Roddy outside Koolarrow studios is a sign of things to come but with FNM being such an unpredictable band, we really can't speculate. When we reached out to Bill he refused to comment.........

A post shared by Roddy Bottum (@roddybottum) on Nov 29, 2017 at 1:47pm PST