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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1993-04-08
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REVIEWS, Page 70MUSICBlazing Their Own Road
By GIL GRIFFIN
PERFORMER: FAITH NO MORE
ALBUM: Angel Dust
LABEL: Slash/Reprise
THE BOTTOM LINE: The hard-rocking Bay Area quintet cope
with success by sticking with what got them there.
Mainstream pop success is a difficult cross to bear for
avant-garde hard rockers. Their stock-in-trade is assaulting the
status quo and ridiculing pop culture, yet suddenly their songs
are mixed into Top 40 radio's diet of fluffy, fast-food hits.
Bands such as Metallica and Nirvana have scored their share of
chart toppers recently without being perceived as "selling out."
Now, two years after their critically acclaimed, breakthrough
album The Real Thing, the San Francisco-based quintet Faith No
More are the latest heavy-metal hitters to arrive at this
crossroads.
In their third and latest album, Angel Dust, Faith No
More's response is to rev up their guitar engines, crank the
bass, drums and keyboards, and with a loud scream put the pedal
to the metal and once again blaze their own road. Some of the
songs are indeed catchy, but don't expect them to become Top 40
fodder, as neither the band's turbulent sound nor its acerbic
wit has been sacrificed.
Lead vocalist Mike Patton growls, screeches and roars his
way through songs making not-so-subtle commentary on greed,
complacency and selfishness. It's easy to laugh at the skewering
of a thirtysomething character in the midtempo funk-rocker
Midlife Crisis who derives her sense of security from her
"pockets jingling" and is wrapped in "morbid self-attention."
But not all of Faith No More's targets are the rich and
powerful. In the darkly humorous RV, Patton plays to the hilt
a fortysomething couch potato who has made a career of failure.
He narrates the sorry soliloquy in a gravelly,
hangover-from-hell drone to a bluesy piano and guitar
accompaniment. "Besides listening to my belly gurgle/ Ain't much
else to do," he groans, then concludes by mumbling, "I think
it's time I had a talk with my kids/ I'll just tell 'em what my
daddy told me/ You ain't ever gonna amount to nothin'."
Love or loathe the album's characters, they are easily
recognizable and convincingly presented -- everyone from the
sweet-talking phony on Caffeine and the suffering farmer in
Smaller and Smaller down to the drug-slinging kingpin in Crack
Hitler. That's what makes Angel Dust poignant, blistering and
nightmarishly real.