Originally released in 1989 on the Slash label, FAITH NO MORE’s third album, The Real Thing, is a weirdly diverse, yet positively polished mock-horror funk/thrash attack of queasy, lounge-y, prog-y metal madness. And if you’re into that rock trivia kind of stuff, this was the first album that Mike Patton was featured on, after coming on-board following Chuck Mosley’s departure in 1988.
Patton had been singing with his previous band, Mr. Bungle, and in two weeks, had written all of the lyrics for the songs on The Real Thing (which also earned Grammy nominations and achieved Platinum status in Canada, the United States, and South America).
The hit song ‘Epic’ was released in 1989 and blew up all over MTV and Top 10 rock radio. The music video for the song received a good bit of criticism from animal rights activists for the way the video ended (come on, I know we all remember that “fish-out-of-water” ending pretty vividly, don’t we?).
MEMORABLE JAMS
- ‘From Out of Nowhere’ – the album’s opener; a driving love song with some killer keys and Mike’s multi-octave vocs – “One minute here and one minute there…And then you wave good-bye…”
- ‘Falling to Pieces’ – a drums and bass showcase, with some killer keys, and more of Mike’s funked-out lyrics about life running a-muck (the vid was pretty freak-a-zoid, too) – “Some-body put me to-gether!”
- ‘War Pigs’ – Yep, FNM did a cover of the Sabbath hit, too. It’s a little bit faster, but it rocks. And Mike’s funk-y, whine-y vocs give it a perfect late 80′s/early 90′s cross-over “freshness.”
- ‘Epic’ – this was the huge MTV hit back in the day with Mike’s Patton-ted rap-y verses, sing-a-long choruses, and that..you know…”fish out of water” piano finale.
FAITH NO MORE was/is the shite. Fans of the band don’t need us to tell you this. But if you want to know where many of those f*cked-up “nu-metal” bands derived their influences from, you could probably trace a lot of it back to FNM. Get the full album on iTunes.