The Real Thing (Faith No More Album)

''The Real Thing'' is the third studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 20, 1989, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the first album to feature singer Mike Patton, following the dismissal of previous vocalist Chuck Mosley. On this album, Faith No More continued to advance their sound range, combining alternative metal, funk metal, and rap metal.

Background

Faith No More underwent several lineup changes before recording their first album, ''We Care a Lot'', released in 1985 and distributed through San Francisco-based label Mordam Records. On the original vinyl release, the band is credited as "Faith. No More" on the album's liner notes, back cover, and on the record itself. Within a year the band signed up with Slash Records. The debut album's title track "We Care a Lot" was later re-recorded, for their follow-up album '' Introduce Yourself'' in 1987, and released as their first single. Membership remained stable until vocalist Chuck Mosley was replaced by Mike Patton in 1988.

Production

The writing for the majority of the music for ''The Real Thing'' took place after the tour for '' Introduce Yourself''. A demo version of "The Morning After", under the moniker "New Improved Song", with alternate lyrics written and sung by Chuck Mosley was released on the ''Sounds·Waves 2'' extended play with the '' Sounds'' magazine. "Surprise! You're Dead!" was composed by Jim Martin in the 1970s, while he was guitarist for Agents of Misfortune, which also featured Cliff Burton in their line up. The recording of the song took place in December 1988 after Chuck Mosley was fired from the band, and was completed prior to the hiring of Mike Patton, who then wrote all the lyrics for the songs, and recorded them the following month over the music.

Producer Matt Wallace said that Patton wrote the lyrics over a 10 to 12 day period; this is considered an impressive feat considering Patton was only 19-20 years old, and "pulled it out of thin air". The only input from Wallace came during a few days spent at a San Francisco coffee shop, where he advised Patton to incorporate more metaphors to soften some of the darker, heavier lyrical themes. Among the darker lyrics on the album are "The Morning After", "Surprise! You're Dead" and "Underwater Love". In 1995, British music publication '' Q'' described all three of these songs as lyrically revolving around murder. "Underwater Love" has upbeat music which contrasts the apparent lyrical matter.

The recording sessions yielded several songs that did not appear on the album. Two of them, "The Grade" and "The Cowboy Song", later appeared on the singles and on the UK edition of ''Live at the Brixton Academy''. A third song, "Sweet Emotion", was later re-recorded with different lyrics as "The Perfect Crime" for the soundtrack to the film that also starred a cameo appearance from guitarist Jim Martin, ''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey''. The original version was released on ''Flexible Fiend 3'' with ''Kerrang!'' magazine issue 258 and on ''The Very Best Definitive Ultimate Greatest Hits Collection'', the 2009 greatest hits compilation released to coincide with the band's reunion tour.

Touring and support

Tours

The tour in support of ''The Real Thing'' was the first Faith No More tour conducted with Mike Patton. The band had begun to be marketed as metal by the media after the album's release, and they were now primarily playing with other bands from the heavy metal genre. Notable artists Faith No More performed with during the touring cycle include Metallica, Billy Idol, Soundgarden, Voivod, Sacred Reich, Forbidden, Primus, Babes in Toyland and Poison. They managed to attract controversy for mocking the party/sex-filled lifestyles of glam metal tourmates such as Poison at several shows in Europe during 1990. At a 1990 Monsters of Rock show in Italy, Patton asked the crowd "which member of Poison can suck his own dick?", and also made fun of Aerosmith, saying to the crowd "out of all the bands today, who do you think does the most drugs? I think it's Aerosmith." Ironically, Faith No More would later cover parts of Aerosmith's song "Walk This Way" on their subsequent '' Angel Dust'' tour, and were originally scheduled to go on a European tour with them in 1998, which was cancelled due to Faith No More's split that year.

In 1989, the second show of the tour was filmed for the music video to " From out of Nowhere" in the I-Beam nightclub. During the show, Patton had a beer bottle smashed over his right hand, causing lacerations to some tendons. He regained use of his hand after it healed, but he no longer has feeling in it. The band's August, 28 1990 concert at Burgherrenhalle in Kaiserslautern, Germany is notable for featuring the only ever performance of the song "Faster Disco" with Patton on vocals. The concert also featured several other Chuck Mosley-era songs which have almost never been performed live with Patton, including "Blood", "Greed" and "The Jungle". At that time, the band's first independent album ''We Care a Lot'' was not in circulation. "As the Worm Turns" and "Why Do You Bother" were the only songs from the album to be regularly worked into the band's setlists on the tour (aside from the title track, which was re-recorded for their major label debut '' Introduce Yourself''). Regarding the decision to still perform material from ''We Care a Lot'', Gould said to ''Metal Hammer'' in May 1990 that, "we'd feel weird cutting that part of ourselves off. We'd be ignoring a root of the tree, if you will."

During the tour, they covered parts of the Milli Vanilli songs "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" and " Baby Don't Forget My Number". Faith No More had earlier met Milli Vanilli at the album launch party for ''The Real Thing'' in mid-1989. Faith No More greeted Milli Vanilli at the launch party and told them that they were fans, but Milli Vanilli were unaware of who Faith No More were at that time. Other songs that Faith No More covered snippets from during the tour include "Buffalo Stance" by Neneh Cherry, " Bust a Move" by Young MC, "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House, "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" by Elton John, "Get Up! (Before the Night Is Over)" by Technotronic, "Fever" by Peggy Lee, "Für Elise" by Ludwig van Beethoven, " If You Don't Know Me by Now" by Simply Red, " It Takes Two" by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock, " Let Love Rule" by Lenny Kravitz, "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen, " Macho Man" by The Village People, " Oh Yeah" by Yello, "Paradise" by Sade, " Philadelphia Freedom" by Elton John, "Pump up the Jam" by Technotronic, " Pump up the Volume" by M, A, R, R, S, "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2, " Turtle Power!" by Partners in Kryme, "Unskinny Bop" by Poison, "Vogue" by Madonna, " Y.M.C.A." by The Village People, "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" by The New Kids on the Block and the theme from the film '' Love Story'' by Francis Lai. They covered a snippet of "Carnaval in Rio" by Heino, but changed the lyrics to "Carnaval in Cologne" when playing it in Cologne, Germany, and to "Carnaval in Munich" when playing it in Munich, Germany. They also covered a song from a German candy commercial, which was by confectionery company Haribo, as well as a song called "Sweet Dreams" from a Nestlé commercial, with the band continuing to cover these two songs on the tour for ''Angel Dust''. For outro music at their shows, the band once used "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong, while for intro music they frequently used Toto's ''Dune'' soundtrack song " Big Battle"

Touring in support of the album lasted from 1989 to mid-1991. Due to their small catalog at the time, the band eventually grew tired of playing songs from ''The Real Thing'' towards the end of the tour. This has been cited as one of the reasons for their change in sound on their next album, ''Angel Dust''.

Singles

The first single to be released from the album was "From Out of Nowhere" on August 30, 1989, which failed to make the UK Singles Chart. It was re-released on April 2, 1990, and made number twenty-three on the UK Singles Chart. In between these releases was "Epic" on January 30, 1990, the music video for which received extensive airplay on MTV throughout the year, despite provoking anger from animal rights activists for a slow motion shot of a fish flopping out of water. "Falling to Pieces" then saw release on July 2, 1990, and made it to number 92 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 before the reissue of "Epic", which became the band's first number one hit single, on the ARIA Charts, as well their only top ten single on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, where it reached ninth position.

"Surprise! You're Dead!" had a music video produced for it, directed by bassist Billy Gould, featuring footage shot in Chile during a South American tour in 1991. However, the song never saw release as an official single, and the video was not released until its appearance on '' Video Croissant''. "Edge of the World" saw limited release as a two track promo single in Brazil on CD and 12" vinyl, with the album version as track one and the Brixton Academy live version as the second track, in a yellow slipcase with basic black text.

Critical reception

''The Real Thing'' is one of Faith No More's most successful albums to date. It is now considered a classic metal album by fans and critics alike. Although released in mid-1989, ''The Real Thing'' did not enter the ''Billboard'' 200 until February 1990, after the release of the second single from the album, "Epic". The album eventually peaked at number eleven on the chart in October 1990, following the reissue of "Epic" almost a year and half after the initial release of the album. It was eventually certified platinum in U.S. and Canada as well as being certified Silver in the United Kingdom.

In July 1989, metal publication ''The Hard Report'' described the band as "one of the brightest new stars on the metal/alternative horizon", and said that on ''The Real Thing'' "Mike Patton is the new vocal presence, and seizes the moment with precision rap and a raging soul that claims its rightful place in the power mix." They added that the band "draw from reggae, rap and metal circles and melt the sound into a rhythmic state that practically incites an anthem riot." In 1990, Jonathan Gold of the ''Los Angeles Times'' described Faith No More as the "kings of neo-metal" and "where hip and headbanging meets". Chris Morris of ''Billboard'' magazine described ''The Real Thing'' as having a predominant "funk-metal groove" in 1992, while Travis Lowell of ''Toxic Universe'' said in 2001 that it contained "funk, metal, traditional rock, instrumental, and even a little 'easy listening.

Tom Breihan wrote for ''Stereogum'' in 2012 that the album "gets a ton of credit and blame for helping to popularize rap-metal, but it was a lot more than that." Following the 2015 remastered re-release of the album, several sources retrospectively reviewed it; Brandon Geist for ''Rolling Stone'' wrote that it was then "considered to be an alterna-metal classic", and Joseph Schafer for ''Stereogum'' ranked it as the second best Faith No More album, commenting that it was "more cohesive ndlovable" than ''Angel Dust''. They called it "sublime funk metal" and wrote that "the amount of diversity Faith No More crammed into 1989's ''The Real Thing'' seemed to be a middle finger to arena rock". Stuart Berman for ''Pitchfork'' wrote that it had a "reputation as an alt-rock trailblazer" and "connection to a long-past funk-metal zeitgeist" continuing to state that the album track "Epic" "was perfectly timed to satiate the then-burgeoning appetite for rap-rock".

Chris Conaton for ''PopMatters'' wrote in 2015 that the album "made a minor splash in the alternative metal community" and featured "a fascinating and entertaining smorgasbord of styles", Ian Gittins wrote in his book ''The Periodic Table of Heavy Rock'' that the band had the "standard hard-rock assault weapons" when Patton replaced Mosley, but "accessorized them with wildly eclectic influences from hip hop to synth pop and a brutally sarcastic sense of black humour":

Legacy

The album was highly praised by The Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato as well as most members of Korn, including Jonathan Davis, Brian "Head" Welch and James "Munky" Shaffer.

"Epic" was ranked number thirty on VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs, and number sixty-seven on their 100 Greatest One-hit Wonders list.

Cover versions

* "From Out of Nowhere" has been covered by Canadian new wave/electronic rock band The Birthday Massacre on their compilation album ''Imagica'', Finnish band Apocalyptica on their second album, '' Inquisition Symphony'', German power metal band Helloween covered the song on their cover album '' Metal Jukebox'' and the Danish metal band, Raunchy covered the song on their album '' Velvet Noise Extended''. It has also been covered by the band Five Finger Death Punch, and is featured on the UK version of their album ''The Way of the Fist'' as well as the soundtrack for '' The Avengers''.
* "The Real Thing" was covered by American progressive metal band Redemption on the album '' The Fullness of Time'' as a bonus track.
* "Epic" has been covered both in concerts and in studio recordings. A cover was included on the 2007 ''Kerrang! Higher Voltage'' CD, a compilation of artists covering other songs, with Welsh rock band The Automatic covering the song for the album. The metalcore band Atreyu also covered the song on their album ''Lead Sails Paper Anchor'', and the Swedish indie band Love Is All covered it on their 2008 tour. Sugar Ray has also covered the song live. In early 2023, The Lucid along with Violent J (Insane Clown Posse) re-imagined the song with re-written lyrics and vocal melodies retitling it "Sweet Toof".
* "Surprise! You're Dead!" has been covered by Jim Martin following his departure from the band, on his solo release '' Milk and Blood'', and by Humans Being for the '' Tribute of the Year'' album. It was also covered by Belgian death metal band Aborted on their album '' Slaughter & Apparatus: A Methodical Overture'', by American technical death metal band Revocation as a bonus track on their album '' Chaos of Forms'', and by American deathcore band All Shall Perish as a bonus track on their album ''This Is Where It Ends''.
* "Zombie Eaters" was covered by Ill Niño with Chino Moreno for their extended play '' The Under Cover Sessions''.
* "Edge of the World" is covered twice on the ''Tribute of the Year'' album by both Hate Dept. and Combine Heathen.

Awards

''The Real Thing'' was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance category in 1989 and "Epic" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1991.

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

* Mike Bordin – drums
* Roddy Bottum – keyboards
* Bill Gould – bass
* James Martin – guitars
* Mike Patton – vocals

Production

* Matt Wallace – producer, engineer
* Jim "Watts" Vereecke – assistant engineer
* Craig Doubet – assistant engineer
* John Golden – mastering
* Lendon Flanagon – photography
* Jeff Price – artwork
* Terry Robertson – CD design

Charts

Weekly charts

Year end charts

Certifications

References

Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Real Thing, The
1989 albums
Albums produced by Matt Wallace
Faith No More albums
Slash Records albums