Album of the Year (Faith No More album)

''Album of the Year'' is the sixth studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 3, 1997, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the first album to feature the band's current guitarist Jon Hudson, and was their last studio album before their eleven-year hiatus from 1998 to 2009. The album has been described by Allmusic as being "more straightforward musically than past releases." It spawned three singles: " Ashes to Ashes", "Last Cup of Sorrow", and "Stripsearch".

Background

Recording

''Album of the Year'' guitarist Jon Hudson joined the band in 1996, after the departure of Dean Menta. Regarding Menta, Billy Gould said, "We didn't fire Dean because he was an asshole, we didn't fire Dean because of anything, it was just because we couldn't write. And he had already written songs but it wasn't working. He toured fine."

In a 1997 interview with ''SFGate'', Gould reflected on the making of the album, saying, "Very rarely were we all in the same city at the same time. If we were lucky, there'd be a three-week window, and then we'd practice as much as we could and record at the end of the period." Roddy Bottum similarly recalled that "everybody's schedule was hectic. And so it was a situation of making the record around people's other projects."

When early demo work on ''Album of the Year'' was beginning between Mike Bordin, Bottum, Gould and Menta, Mike Patton was still performing with Mr. Bungle, who were in the midst of their '' Disco Volante'' run of shows. Bottum stated in a June 1997 interview with Australian paper ''The Herald Sun'' that "We decided we'd just write a bunch of songs and keep the songwriting as simple as possible and just go into the studio and record as quickly as possible. That was the way we used to write stuff when we started the band, just really simple repetitive riffs without a whole lot of thought. And Mike came back from his tour with Mr. Bungle, and he only liked about half of the songs, and only felt like he could sing on about half of the songs."

Following this round of demo work and the firing of Menta, the members pursued other projects, leaving the band on the verge of splitting (because of this, ''Album of the Year'' has since been labelled as a "miracle baby"). Gould said after Menta's firing "the momentum just shut down and everybody went off and started doing their side stuff." Bottum went out on tour to support the debut album of his Imperial Teen side project, Bordin left to tour with Black Sabbath for six months, and Mike Patton flew to Italy to be with his wife Cristina Zuccatosta, who he had married in 1994. Gould himself spent a few months travelling Europe. While in Albania, he came up with the song "Mouth to Mouth", which was inspired by the "loud arabic music" he heard on the streets there. Gould then returned to San Francisco to focus on the album with Hudson, who entered Faith No More during this period of inactivity between the collective group."Keeping the Faith", ''The Herald Sun'' (June 1997)

The early writing sessions with Hudson yielded 12 songs, including " Ashes to Ashes" and "Paths of Glory". Gould sent a tape of "Ashes to Ashes" to Patton in Italy, so he could add lyrics to it. Eight of these new songs written with Hudson were not included on the final album, due to being too "poppy".

During early 1997, all five members reconvened in San Francisco with Swiss producer Roli Mosimann, who is the long-standing collaborator of industrial rock band The Young Gods, a major influence on Faith No More. Bottum reflects "We did the record in parts, more than as a whole. Then at the end of the process, or near the end, we got together." Patton had written new songs while away in Italy with his wife, such as "Home Sick Home".

Mosimann encouraged the band to utilize computer-based recording/editing software Pro Tools, something they had not done before. Gould stated, "he said there were some things that he'd like to change in Pro Tools. A good example of Roli's editing was the song 'Mouth to Mouth.' It wasn't sounding right to us at all. It was almost a throwaway song. But Roli really liked that one, so he ended up taking the cousticdrums in the choruses and moving them to the verses in Pro Tools. It gave the song a whole new life."

Once recording was completed, the individual members spent time preparing for the upcoming tour in support of the album. The impending ''Album of the Year'' tour would end up sidetracking a covers album Mike Patton had planned on doing with Mr. Bungle.

The album's music displayed a more melancholic sound overall compared to previous releases. Gould said at the time, "it just turned out to be that way that the new material is more melodic, slower and more atmospheric. It was important for me that the album has a general mood that can be found in all songs and that it doesn't go in too many directions like we did in the past." Patton commented, "It's got more feelings and balance than our previous albums. Possibly it's darker too." Shortly before ''Album of the Year'' was released, San Francisco paper ''East Bay Times'' claimed it was "by and large, a heavy metal album."

Songs

"Naked in Front of the Computer" is one of the few songs in the Faith No More catalogue written solely by Mike Patton. In the early years of online filesharing, it was sometimes incorrectly labelled as an Incubus song. When asked about the song's meaning, Billy Gould replied:
"She Loves Me Not" is the eighth song on the album. The song itself seems to draw its influence from lounge music. It was to be the fourth single off the album, but the band ended before this could be accomplished. It has also never been played live. Despite this, it made an appearance on Faith No More's 2006 greatest hits compilation '' The Platinum Collection''. When asked about the song, Billy Gould replied:

"Pristina" is a song written about the then ongoing conflicts in the Balkans, with it being the final track of the band's career for nearly two decades. Artistdirect state it "stands out as arguably the most beautiful song in Faith No More's catalog." The song was inspired by a trip Gould made to the Balkans, following a 1995 German tour with Faith No More. When interviewed by ''Serbian Times'', he reminisced, "at that time no one in America knew what was happening there, American press didn't write about that ..That place left a deep impression on me." A piano-based remix of the song by Gould appears on some editions of the album, along with several electronic-based remixes of other songs, made by people from outside the band. Gould said of the remix, "the reason I did it was because, well, I wrote the song, and at the time, the way remixers were going, there was a certain sameness oing on I didn’t want to just give he trackto some remixer who was going to turn into like some kind of industrial house music song or something." He added that his remix took the song to "almost a smooth jazz level."

There are multiple references to cinema throughout ''Album of the Year''. The track "Paths of Glory" is named after the 1957 film of the same name, while "Helpless" contains the line "I even tried to get arrested today", which is taken from the 1965 film ''The Slender Thread''. "Helpless" also utilizes organ-like sounds in the verses. Despite this, no real organs were used on the song; the sounds were instead created via a patch on Bottum's Roland JV-1080 synthesizer. There are whistling effects towards the end of the song. When it was performed live for the first time in October 1997, the whistling was replaced by backing vocals.

The opening track "Collision" was ranked by ''Metal Hammer'' as the fifth heaviest Faith No More song. It features low, harsh synths that almost mimic a bass. Gould says, "a lot of the really cool sounds in this song that sound like guitar are actually keyboard string sounds running through a Tech 21 SansAmp. You can really mangle keyboard sounds with a SansAmp; you can get some amazing dark, ugly textures."

"The Big Kahuna" and "Light Up & Let Go" were originally intended to appear on the album, although they ended up appearing as B-sides and as bonus tracks for the Japanese edition. According to Mike Patton, "The Big Kahuna" was cut from the final track listing since it did not fit in with the rest of the album. He also claimed the song's title was not a reference to the Big Kahuna restaurant from Quentin Tarantino's ''Pulp Fiction''.''Beat'', March 1997.

The band recorded approximately two dozen songs during the ''Album of the Year'' sessions. However, almost no unreleased material from the sessions has ever surfaced. Patton said, "we did about 7 or 8 songs that won't appear on the album. I don't know if they will ever appear somewhere. It's like cookin' coffee...you have to throw it away when it's kinda bitter. The main problem all of the time was: are the songs good enough for the album or should we write some more. it's difficult to find the right balance. First we had too many commercial songs, then there were too many heavy songs." The only unreleased outtake to have emerged is the song "Instrumental", which appeared on the 1998 compilation '' Who Cares a Lot?''. It has often been mislabelled as being from the 1994–95 '' King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime'' era sessions, and was even included on the 2016 deluxe edition for that album.

Artwork and title

The photograph on the front cover depicts Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who is also regarded as the country's founding father.

The album jacket depicts the funeral of Masaryk, with the words "pravda vítězí" (truth prevails), the motto of the Czech Republic, adorning his coffin.

The artwork was reflected with the band frequently wearing suits during their tour in support of the album, a trend that carried over to their 2009 reunion tour.

While the album sleeve did not feature printed lyrics, Mike Patton and Billy Gould did submit official lyrics to fnm.com, which was a fan controlled site prior to the band's reformation in 2009.

Regarding the title ''Album of the Year'', Bottum said in a June 14, 1997 interview with MTV Europe that "It just seemed right. We've been away for a while. Coming back with a bang or a scream seemed to be effective to us, and a little bit funny."Interview with Mike Patton and Roddy Bottum
MTV Europe. June 14, 1997. In the same interview, Patton elaborated "I think if you can't see the humor in that, then you've got a problem."

Touring

As with previous albums, it was supported by a large scale tour that covered various countries, lasting from April 1997 to December 1997. During April 1998, the band reconvened for three festival dates in Spain and Portugal. These would end up being their last shows in over 10 years, as they announced their split later that month.

When the album was released in mid-1997, Mike Bordin was called in to perform with Ozzy Osbourne for that year's edition of Ozzfest, which ran from May 24 to July 1. This resulted in Robin Guy (of the band Rachel Stamp) filling in on drums for Bordin during a UK Top of the Pops performance on May 30, as well as an absence of any Faith No More shows during the month of June. Shortly after he returned from Ozzfest, the band had to cancel four July dates in Europe, so Bordin could attend the birth of his first daughter in San Francisco.

The ''Album of the Year'' tour is notable for featuring Limp Bizkit, a nu metal/rap metal band greatly influenced by Faith No More, as an opener for several 1997 US dates. They were frequently booed by Faith No More's fans, including during a September 1997 concert at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, where the crowd booed them off stage. In a 2013 interview, Roddy Bottum reflected on the shows with Limp Bizkit, recalling "I fought it at the time. I had to really push to get a couple bands that I liked to get on the bill in Portland and Seattle on that leg. I had no interest in the sound of Limp Bizkit. It was not how I wanted to be represented at all. Not to be snotty at all, but that guy Fred Durst had a really bad attitude. He was kind of a jerk." Bottum also remembered an incident where Durst "called the audience faggots at one show when they booed him". Durst apologized to him after this show, as he did not know that Bottum had come out as gay in the early '90s. Limp Bizkit's guitarist Wes Borland later claimed that his band were excited about the prospect of getting to tour with Faith No More, stating "the idea of it was cool utonce we got there, it was a really tough crowd. They have a really tough crowd to please, who are very vocal about not liking you. We opened for Faith No More and Primus in the same year, and the Primus tour went a lot better than the Faith No More tour."Borland, Wes. 2017. ''Talk Toomey'' Podcast Borland added that he did not get to know Mike Patton personally until several years later.

During the ''Album of the Year'' tour, they would cover the Aqua song "Barbie Girl", " Ain't Talkin' 'bout Dub" by Apollo 440, " Highway Star" by Deep Purple, Will Smith's "Men in Black", Herb Alpert's "This Guy's in Love with You" and the R. Kelly songs " I Believe I Can Fly" and "Gotham City". An intro tape was used at the beginning of shows, which contained "Also sprach Zarathustra

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