So good.
This is such a wonderful album. After an almost equally great "warm-up" album (The Real Thing), Faith No More released their real masterpiece in 1992. Part of the charm of this album is in it's diversity (a staple of Mike Patton); the other part is that it just plain rocks.

Do a search for Faith No More on this site and Fall Out Boy will appear beside "related searches." I guess it's because both of their names start with F, but make no mistake - they're in no way related to each other (aside from the guitar music thing). One unit has enduring talent while the other has the longevity of Billy Ray Cyrus.

A lot of people think rock music died in the mid/late 90's. While I don't think that's entirely true, whenever it faltered in that decade, FNM were there to keep it afloat.

Good stuff.

"Here's how to Order"
When this album came out I was a manager of a Record Store. I remember the entire staff wanted to play it, which meant skipping several tracks, so as not to offend any customers that might be in the store. A deep complex album. I believe it to be the best album of the decade. Faith No More attacks every aspect of society with great contempt. This album blows 'EPIC' away. 'Land of Sunshine', 'RV' , 'Kindergarten' and 'Be Aggressive' are my favorites. This album contains no radio friendly tracks. Ignored by the general public, this album is one of the greatest alternative statements released in the nineties. This album defines the need for the parental advisory label. "My Feet Itch" Where can you find an album with lyrics like that.

The Thing You Hate........Almost
If you want to immerse yourself in a fantasy world for about an hour, buy this, put it in your CD player, slip on some headphones, and prepare to be mildly scared, then continue to sing to yourself for days.

"You're perfect, yes, it's true! But without..." THIS, "you're only you"

One the most underated rock albums ever....
Ever???? Yes ever at least in my generation. Angel dust plays like a pop/punk/rap/funk/metal musical for dimented dissaffected (former)youth like myself. It never caught on and was way ahead of it's time. Mike Pattons vocal influence can still be felt and heard sprinkled all over the pop landscape:Papa Roach, Incubus, Korn, to name a few.
The reason they eluded any more pop success was simple. Maybe too much fusion!!!! The general public sadly wants to know what kind of band or artist they're listening to and after they hear one song they expect you to sound exactly like that one song. I would play "angel dust" at work and people would be befuddled to find out three songs later that we were listening to the same album.
Needless to say this a very diverse album. Sometimes the songs themselves have several different genre's in them. Even as challenging as the album is it still manages to balance a dimented pop sensibility to a lot of the songs. That sensibility was an achilles heel to a lot of hardcore mr.bungle fans but I thought it elevated FNM above the "look how weird we can get" antics of mr.bungle. Even really weird music has to have "hooks" in it as in the evidence of the the Godfather's(Frank Zappa)work.
If you like being challenged musically and already like other musical misfits(Zappa,Fishbone,Primus) than this might be right up your alley. Otherwise stay the hell a way!!!!!!!

The album we all claimed to like
FNM were an excellent art metal band and gave a great wad of interesting, sometimes intriguing art to the world. Alas they also generally failed to truly communicate with their prospective audience, wearing the listener out with many varied twists and turns. Which, if your going to wear out an audience is the way to do it!

So on the up side here we have a band full of confidence and really going for it, exploring their particular vision of artistically challenging (but never prog) musings to a market demographic that struggled to keep up. On this album the boys start to delve further into the sort of musical landscape that would be further defined on later albums, a whole range of songs here that court mellow, not quite lounge, stylings presumably following Pattons obvious love of gentle crooning as well as a few tongue in cheek silly boys stuff like Jizzlobber and more arty tunes such as Everythings Ruined and the somewhat strange but highly effective Be Aggressive, a song where your never sure just how much drugs the band were on during it's writing and recording sessions.

Rather unfairly I always associate this album with the megahit Easy which the bands guitarist Jim Martin absolutely loathed. So you can imagine just how thrilled he must of been when their cover of this creaky old thing became a huge hit world wide. Now perhaps of the boys had of had hits of that size with songs they'd written themselves they'd of paid off the houses they bought with the royalties from The Real Thing. And weirdly enough it was on a separate EP and doubly weird is the fact that this era of the band is perhaps most well known for a throwaway thing they did separately as opposed to this artistically pure but musically less successful album.

All up I filed this record with the rest of my collection without letting it steep. The scenario for me here is simply that I'm not on board for the wandering musings of this band. A mob that I like but don't find myself listening to much.

Note that in some territories there were versions of this album released with an ep of four live bonus tracks - Easy, Be Aggressive, Kindergarten, Mark Bowen. Not life changing but if your lucky enough to track this version down it adds to the value and who knows, may actually help you decide if you want to buy this bands Live at Brixton Academy release