Faith No More (photo: Marc Duckaine)
Just as 18 years is a long time between albums for a band, 25 years is a long time to wait to see one of your favourite bands live. In both cases, we thought it would never happen.
When Faith No More announced their return to the live circuit via some bigger festivals in 2009, the fire was stoked for a full-fledged reunion tour and a potential new album from the band, whose last studio offering was 1997’s Album of the Year.
Cue the band’s current North American tour and new album, Sol Invictus, and cue me, in an arena with thousands of Faith No More fans, absolutely ecstatic that I could finally see them play live. The level of excitement in the capacity crowd hung in the air as transgender rapper Christeene spent 35 minutes testing most of the audience’s patience. While her in-between song rants were pure genius, and her male go-go dancer-flanked live show was a pretty rad spectacle, Christeene’s rapping was mostly rote, suffering from horribly muddy sound (more on that later).
As non-fans complained about the long wait for Faith No More to hit the stage, some of the band’s superfans stood patiently near the front with maniacal grins on their faces. This isn’t a band to take lightly, and the minute singer Mike Patton and company started it was clear that the audience was going to either dance their asses off, or mosh their appendages into ground beef. Or, in some cases, both.
The band’s set was a surprising and pleasant mix of songs from their latter era material, including five songs from an album that won’t be officially released until the tour is almost over. That’s pretty bold. Only a few oldie hits were included in the set (“Epic,” of course, “We Care a Lot,” and “Midlife Crisis” were the big biggies), but mostly the band appeared to pick the songs they wanted to play, which meshed well with the hardcore fans.
Encores were also carefully picked and, again, didn’t pander to what you’d think (they played “Epic” quite early in the set, but left “We Care a Lot” and the punishing “Digging the Grave” for their return to the stage). A second, single-song encore of the last song on their new album, “From the Dead,” which Patton referred to as their “first ever hippy jam,” was a bold choice, ending the nearly two-hour set with class and enough confidence to hint that maybe Faith No More are really back for a second run of brilliance. Fingers and toes crossed.
Oh, yes, as I hinted at earlier, the sound at the PNE Forum was absolute garbage. Only Faith No More could push through a wall of mud that thick. Fuck.
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