Angel Dust (Faith No More album)


Angel Dust is the fourth studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 8, 1992, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the follow-up to 1989's highly successful The Real Thing, and was the band's final album to feature guitarist Jim Martin. It was also the first album where vocalist Mike Patton had any substantial influence on the band's music, having been hired after the other band members had written and recorded everything for The Real Thing except vocals and most of the lyrics. The band stated that they wanted to move away from the funk metal style of their prior releases, towards a more "theatrical" sound.
Angel Dust is Faith No More's best-selling album to date, having sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide. It also debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, making it the band's only top-ten album in the United States.

Background, title and artwork

Following the success of their previous album The Real Thing and its subsequent tour, Faith No More took a break for a year and a half before beginning work on the follow-up, Angel Dust. During this time Mike Patton rejoined his high-school band Mr. Bungle to record their eponymous debut album. They decided not to "play it safe" and instead took a different musical direction, much to the dismay of guitarist Jim Martin. Martin also did not like the title of the album as chosen by keyboardist Roddy Bottum. In an interview taken while they were in the studio he said that "Roddy wanted to name it Angel Dust, I don't know why, I just want you to know that if it's named Angel Dust, it didn't have anything to do with me." He also stated that Bottum was the one who came up with a basic concept of a bird front cover and a meat locker back cover.
Bottum stated that he chose the name because it "summed up what did perfectly" in that "it's a really beautiful name for a really hideous drug and that should make people think." Similarly, the artwork contrasted one beautiful image with a gruesome one by depicting a soft blue airbrushed great egret on the front cover while on the back is an image of a cow hanging on a meat hook. Both bassist Billy Gould and Mike Bordin said that the image on the rear of the album is not based on support for vegetarianism but rather a preview of the music, suggesting its combination of being "really aggressive and disturbing and then really soothing", the "beautiful with the sick".
The photo of a group of Russian soldiers with the band members' faces inserted was edited by Werner Krutein and used as the cover of the "Midlife Crisis" single. The band had originally planned for this but then did not like the final product. Mike Bordin described the situation:

Writing and recording

Writing process

The writing for Angel Dust took up most of 1991 with large portion of the songs being written by either Billy Gould, Roddy Bottum, Mike Bordin, and for the first time, Mike Patton. Regarding this Patton said:
Some attributed this to its sonic difference with its predecessors, however, Mike Patton credits it to being "better at playing what hear in heads" and went on to say that "before, we used to kinda cheat around, and play around what it was. We could never translate it into the band, and we're getting better at doing that. Like, we wanted to do a real lazy, sappy kinda ballad, so we covered the theme from Midnight Cowboy! And there's even a song that sounds like The Carpenters!" In a trend that started when then-vocalist Chuck Mosley lived in Los Angeles while the rest of the band resided in the Bay Area, the band would record demo tapes of the songs and exchange them between each other in Los Angeles before sending them to Jim Martin so that he could work on his guitar arrangements, after which he would send them back for approval.
Album producer Matt Wallace stated there was a great deal of tension between Jim Martin and the rest of the band that made the recording sessions difficult. Speaking on the acrimony, Wallace said:
The lyrics for Angel Dust were written for the most part by vocalist Mike Patton. He got his inspiration for the lyrics from many different places such as questions from the Oxford Capacity Analysis, fortune cookies and late-night television. After engaging in a sleep deprivation experiment, he wrote "Land of Sunshine" and "Caffeine": Patton added that, "I drove around a lot in my Honda, drove to a real bad area of town, parked and just watched people. Coffee shops and white-trash diner-type places were great for inspiration." Patton described "RV" as being a character sketch based on the "white-trash" people he was observing during the making of the album. He said in 1992, "it's the white trash saga: You wake up, you do nothing and you talk a lot of shit... and that's what the song does."
Songs with lyricists other than Patton include "Be Aggressive" by Roddy Bottum ; "Everything's Ruined", by Mike Patton and Billy Gould; "Kindergarten" by Mike Patton and Roddy Bottum; and "Jizzlobber", by Jim Martin and Mike Patton, which according to Patton, is about his fear of imprisonment. However, Gould, in response to a question by a fan, suggested that the song is about a porn star. "Be Aggressive" has homosexual undertones, with Bottum having come out as gay around this time. He said in December 1992 that "what I like about 'Be Aggressive' is that even though it's macho in a homosexual way, lots of FNM listeners probably imagine that it is a woman who is getting down on her knees and swallowing rather than a man. I guess it's easier for people to understand and deal with it that way."
In addition to exploring instrumental film music with their cover of the Midnight Cowboy theme, the band was experimenting with doing other songs in non-rock genres during this time, including country music on "RV", German polka music on the B-side "Das Schützenfest" and R&B/soul music on the bonus track "Easy", which was a cover of the 1977 Commodores song. They would continue to explore doing songs in different genres on their next two releases, with 1995's King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime having a significant number of tracks which weren't written in the style of rock songs. In an August 1992 interview, Gould said "we don't play any style of music that you can put your finger on" and that "we don't have to be a heavy metal band". He added that, "in a way, it is kind of bad when
I say that because a lot of heavy metal people pissed off".

Recording process

For the recording of Angel Dust, Faith No More were once again assisted by Matt Wallace, who had produced all of the group's previous studio recordings. They entered Coast Recorders in late 1991, originally set to track a total of 17 songs; however after writing two more while in studio, a total of 19 were recorded. At that time, the final song titles had not been chosen so they were often referred to by the following working titles, some of which continued to be used internally by the band, including on their live set lists:
  • "Triplet" – "Caffeine"
  • "Madonna" – "Midlife Crisis"
  • "Macaroni and Cheese", "Country Western Song" – "RV"
  • "Arabic", "The Arabian Song" – "Smaller and Smaller"
  • "F Sharp" – "Kindergarten"
  • "I Swallow" – "Be Aggressive"
  • "Japanese" – "A Small Victory"
  • "Action Adventure" – "Crack Hitler"
  • "The Sample Song" – "The [World Is Yours (Faith No More song)|The World Is Yours]"
  • "The Carpenters Song" – "Everything's Ruined"
  • "The Funk Song" – "Land of Sunshine"
  • "The Shuffle Song"/"Seagull Song" – Unpublished recording
While 13 tracks were released on the standard album, the sessions also produced a cover of the Commodores' "Easy", a reworking of the previously recorded 1985 track "As the Worm Turns", and a song called "The World Is Yours". In 1992-93, "Easy" and the re-recorded version of "As the Worm Turns" were both included on certain editions of Angel Dust, in addition to appearing on other releases such as EPs and singles. Aside from featuring Mike Patton instead of their earlier singer Chuck Mosley, one of the major differences between the 1985 "As the Worm Turns" and the re-recording is the incorporation of DJ scratches on the newer version. "The World Is Yours" was posthumously released on the band's first compilation album Who Cares a Lot? The Greatest Hits, which came out in October 1998, six months after Faith No More's original split. While the songs "Das Schutzenfest" and the Dead Kennedys cover "Let's Lynch the Landlord" were both released along with "Easy" on an EP in late 1992, at least one of these songs was not actually recorded during the Angel Dust sessions: "Let's Lynch the Landlord" was recorded in Bill Gould's bedroom and produced by the band, prior to the Angel Dust sessions, for Virus 100, a Dead Kennedys tribute album. While it is unclear as to whether or not "Das Schutzenfest" is from the Angel Dust sessions, Matt Wallace is listed as the engineer for this song but is given no producer credit. Their cover of "Let's Lynch the Landlord" was done in the style of a lounge song, although the original Dead Kennedys version was a punk song.
When the album was being written in 1991, the band went on a month-long tour of Argentina, Brazil and Japan, where they debuted early versions of "The World Is Yours," "RV," and "Caffeine". This run of shows occurred between August and October 1991, and ended with a single show in Oakland, California on October 12, 1991, as part of the Day on the Green festival. The first performances of "The World Is Yours" and "RV" came during an August 31, 1991 concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the two songs would go on to be played several more times during the mini-tour, with "Caffeine" added during the tour. The other songs from the Angel Dust sessions only started being performed live in 1992. To date, the 1991 performances of "The World Is Yours" remain the only times the song is known to have been played live.

Samples

There were many samples used on Angel Dust, to the point that it was called a "gratuitous" amount and record label executives were concerned about the volume of samples used. They came from such sources as Simon and Garfunkel, Diamanda Galás, Z'EV, and The Wizard of Oz. The Simon and Garfunkel sample is from the first bar of their song "Cecilia" and appears throughout the drum track of "Midlife Crisis". "Malpractice" contains a four-second sample of the second movement of Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 as performed by the Kronos Quartet, on their album Black Angels; track 8, "Allegro molto", at 2:10. It features in four points towards the end of the song at 2:56, 3:02, 3:22 and 3:26. Many of the original samples used in the songs were recorded by Roddy on a Digital Audio Tape recorder whilst "just whilst wandering out and about". "Crack Hitler", as well as featuring samples of sirens in the background, features a sample in the intro of Iris Lettieri reading a flight announcement at the Rio de Janeiro-Galeão International Airport. She then tried to sue the band for using her voice without permission. There are also samples of aboriginal chanting, amongst the sound effects from Sound Ideas, in the background of "Smaller and Smaller". Also, a brief succession of sounds, including a police car siren and a warp noise, similar to what Frank Zappa abundantly made use of on his album Joe's Garage is recognizable in the song "A Small Victory". The song "Midlife Crisis" contains a sample of "Car Thief" by the Beastie Boys. The intro of "Caffeine" features sounds of animals, of which monkeys and a wolf can be distinguished. The B-side "The World Is Yours" features the most samples of any of the songs on the album by far, and was even referred to as "The Sample Song" by the band. The intro alone features a death sentence by rapid fire, and an elephant. The bridge of the song includes a recording of R. Budd Dwyer's suicide that was broadcast in 1987.
"Be Aggressive" has cheerleaders chanting the song title throughout the verses. These chants were made specifically for the album, rather than being samples, and featured four 15 to 17 year old cheerleaders. The chants were meant to resemble cheerleaders cheering on a football team, even though the protagonist in the song is someone performing oral sex. Some would later note similarities between "Be Aggressive" and Marilyn Manson's 2003 song "mOBSCENE", which had cheerleaders repeatedly chanting "Be Obscene".

Touring and promotion

Faith No More started the tour to promote Angel Dust shortly after the album's completion on the European leg of the Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden, which Bottum described as a "complete European vacation" due to their light concert schedule. In an interview taken on June 6, 1992, Billy said:
They continued on this tour through the North America leg with Guns N' Roses and Metallica, before being fired from the tour and splitting off on their own European tour. It included shows in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, seven performances from November 4–11 in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, 3 more performances in Germany, Belgium, Germany again, the Netherlands. For the European shows, they were supported by the female fronted band L7. They then toured the British Isles, and continued to be supported by L7. They toured Wales, England, where they played at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on November 23, then performed for three nights straight at the Brixton Academy from November 25–27 and on the following night at the NEC Arena in Birmingham, before going through Ireland and Scotland, where they played the first 4 nights of December in the Barrowland Ballroom. The band then went back through England, Belgium, had 3 performances from the December 8–10 in France, 3 performances from the December 12–14 in Spain, France again, Italy, Switzerland and Austria again before having a break for Christmas and New Year. On January 13, 1993, they performed "Midlife Crisis" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which was taped in Burbank, California. They began touring America again in mid January 1993 in Seattle, Washington, and finishing in Utah a month later in mid February.
From April to May 1993, the band embarked on a run of shows in the Pacific, first playing in Honolulu, Hawaii, and then on the islands of Guam and Saipan. These run of concerts concluded with a four show tour of Japan, a thirteen show tour of Australia and a two show tour of New Zealand. The Australian tour covered seven of the eight states and territories in the country, including the island state of Tasmania. The only state/territory that wasn't covered in the Australian tour was the remote Northern Territory. Following the performances in these countries, the band was going to tour Singapore, Hong Kong, and Indonesia in mid-May 1993, but cancelled these planned shows and instead did another three concerts on New Zealand's South Island. While in Guam during April 1993, Gould remembered that they went to a military bar that was showing hardcore pornography on the televisions, saying that later this bar started playing a karaoke version of "I Started a Joke", by British-Australian group the Bee Gees. A few years later, Faith No More released a studio cover of "I Started a Joke", with Gould claiming that the experience in Guam had inspired them to record the cover. He recalled in 2015, "it was like God speaking to us: 'You have to do this song.'"
The band returned to Europe for a show in Germany on May 29 and the following day in Vienna then in Budapest. On June 2 they played at Rotterdam Ahoy followed by 4 performances in Germany from June 3–7 and one in Slovakia on June 10. On June 14 and June 16, they played their first shows in Russia and the newly independent nation of Slovenia. Towards the end of June they performed on individual nights in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Portugal then a few days later on July 3–4 in Torhout and Werchter, Belgium followed by one last show in Germany, on July 9, and a headline show at Ruisrock Festival in Turku, Finland July 10 before the final show of the tour in Stratford Upon Avon on July 17. The July 17, 1993 show was their last where Jim Martin was a member, with the final song of the set being "Epic". The band had planned to tour Peru, Brazil and Venezuela in August 1993, but these dates were cancelled due to the issues with Martin. The band did not perform another show until early 1995, after their next album King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime had been recorded.

Live performances and setlists

Despite reportedly being unhappy with the band's change in direction on Angel Dust, Martin has since claimed that he was pleased with their live performances on the Angel Dust tour. He said in 2012, "live performances were always very strong. From my perspective, we came across a lot heavier than the records. Over time, the chord progressions and the arrangements would morph in subtle ways that would make the set heavier than the studio version."
The songs "Malpractice" and "Smaller and Smaller" were rarely or never played on the Angel Dust tour and subsequent tours. "Malpractice" would be performed a few times during the band's Second Coming Tour (Faith No More)|Second Coming Tour] in 2009, before again being dropped from their setlist in following years. It has been claimed that "Malpractice" and "Smaller and Smaller" were both performed twice on the Angel Dust tour, although the details of these performances are in question, and no live recordings have ever surfaced. In a 2012 interview, Gould stated that they didn't perform "Smaller and Smaller" since it was mid-tempo in nature, and having too many of those types of songs in their setlist would make their shows "boring". Gould said, "for some reason or another, we tend to gravitate towards what is called 'mid-tempo' in our writing... In other words, songs that are not fast, but not exactly ballads either." He added that, "'Smaller and Smaller' while pretty grandiose in concept, always felt too long and too plodding to even consider doing live. And truth be told, we were never quite as attached to that one as some of the others."
During the tour, the band's intro music included "The Final Countdown" by Europe, "Foreplay" by Boston, "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer and the "Theme From Shaft" by Isaac Hayes, with the band also once using the theme music from the television series Get Smart. At their late 1991 shows in Japan and South America, they used Toto's Dune soundtrack song "Big Battle" as intro music. For outro music, they used "Garden" by Pearl Jam and "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra at two separate shows in 1992. Faith No More covered snippets of various different songs from other artists during the touring cycle, including "Bad" by Michael Jackson, "Bring Me Edelweiss" by Edelweiss, "Christianity Is Stupid" by Negativeland, "The Goin' Gets Tough From the Getgo" by Ween, "Fat" by Weird Al Yankovic, "Finally" by CeCe Peniston, "Free Your Mind" by En Vogue, "Ha Ha Ha" by Flipper, "In Heaven" by David Lynch, "It Takes Two" by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock, "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam, "Jump Around" by House of Pain, "Keep on Loving You" by REO Speedwagon, "Life is a Highway" by Tom Cochrane, "Mistadobalina" by Del tha Funky Homosapien, "My Name Is Prince" by Prince, "Outshined" by Soundgarden, "Saturday Night" by The Bay City Rollers, "Sex Bomb" by Flipper, "Skinflowers" by The Young Gods, "So What'cha Want" by the Beastie Boys, "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, "Street Tuff" by Rebel MC, "Turned Out" by Helmet, "Two Princes" by Spin Doctors, "Two Tickets to Paradise" by Eddie Money, "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith, "Warm It Up" by Kris Kross, "Forward Ever Backward Never" by WestBam, "We Got the Beat" by The Go-Go's, "We Will Rock You" by Queen, "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" by The New Kids on the Block. Patton would later do a full cover of "Under the Bridge" with his other band Mr. Bungle, as part of a 1999 Halloween concert parodying the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Like on their previous tour for The Real Thing, Faith No More covered songs from commercials by Nestlé and German candy company Haribo during this tour. At a September 1991 show in Brazil, the band also covered a soccer chant; further, at several 1993 shows, they included covers of Angelo Badalamenti's theme to the television series Twin Peaks.

Critical reception and legacy

Angel Dust was met with extensive critical acclaim. One critic wrote that the album is "one of the more complex and simply confounding records ever released by a major label" and similarly, another called it "the most uncommercial follow-up to a hit record ever". After hearing the album, the band's label warned them that releasing the album would be "commercial suicide". The single "A Small Victory" is described as a song "which seems to run Madame Butterfly through Metallica and Nile Rodgers, reveals a developing facility for combining unlikely elements into startlingly original concoctions".
The songs "Malpractice" and "Jizzlobber" have been called "art-damaged death metal" and "nerve-frazzling apocalyptic rock" by contrast with the "accordion-propelled" Midnight Cowboy theme cover that follows. AllMusic calls the album a "bizarro masterpiece", citing the vocals as "smarter and more accomplished" than its predecessor The Real Thing. It gave the album 4.5 stars out of 5, calling it one of their album picks. Kerrang! was less enthusiastic, considering Angel Dust's variety of styles "a personality disorder, of sorts, which undermines its potential greatness." In 1992, Spin commented that "there are slow, scary songs, and not as much funk-metal thrash as the average fan would expect." Entertainment Weekly gave it a B rating in 1992, commenting "is Angel Dust a brave slap in the face of record sales or a self-conscious attempt to unnerve newfound fans? Whatever it is, at least it’s not boring."
The album was also called an "Album of the Year" in 1992 by seven different publications in four countries, making the top 10 in three of them and the top position in one, and was also named the "Most Influential Album of all Time" by Kerrang! despite an initially lukewarm review. Brad Filicky of CMJ New Music Report praised the album in 2003, reflecting, "Faith No More was often lumped in with the funk metal masses that were so popular in the early 90s, but after the success of The Real Thing, the group's first album with Mike Patton, FNM grew tired of the trappings and limitations of the genre. So, rather than release that era's equivalent of Significant Other, the band flipped the script entirely and dropped an experimental bombshell on the scene." The 2009 book Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal describes the album as "a notoriously difficult album to listen to aside from the radio-friendly cover of the Commodores' 'Easy'."
In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked Angel Dust as 65th on their list of "The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time". In a 2018 Louder Sound article, Hoobastank singer Doug Robb listed it as one of the ten albums that changed his life. Oceansize frontman Mike Vennart has also named it one of the albums that changed his life. Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance labelled it as a "glorious record" in 2016. In March 2023, Rolling Stone ranked the album's second track, "Caffeine", at number 55 on their "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Songs of All Time" list. Alex Tefler of The Philadelphia Inquirer refers to Angel Dust as "one of the most deliriously strange records ever to appear on a major label."

Covers

In February 2001, it was announced that Disturbed would be contributing a cover of "Midlife Crisis" for an upcoming Faith No More tribute album, and in April 2001, Disturbed covered the song live twice. The tribute album was additionally set to include covers by Fear Factory, Papa Roach and Taproot, but it never came to fruition due to issues between the different record labels of these bands. Disturbed's cover of "Midlife Crisis" was eventually released in 2009, through Covered, A Revolution in Sound, a covers album by various artists released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Warner Bros. Records, the parent label of both Disturbed and Faith No More. Disturbed's cover was also included on their own rarities album in 2011, titled The Lost Children. In 2002, a different tribute album for Faith No More was released by Underground Inc., titled Tribute of the Year. This tribute album featured mostly independent artists, rather than the more well-known artists announced for the cancelled 2001 tribute album. It included covers of "Everything's Ruined" by Daiquiri, "Kindergarten" by The Drowning Session, "Malpractice" by The Rib, "Be Aggressive" by Sump Pumps, "Jizzlobber" by Grim Faeries and "A Small Victory" by Germ Theory. "Midlife Crisis" was covered twice on the album; by Bile and Sickend, while the Angel Dust outtake "The World Is Yours" was also covered on the album by The Donkey Punch. In 2002, Norwegian symphonic black metal band Trail of Tears covered "Caffeine", as a bonus track for their album A New Dimension of Might. In 2003, American heavy metal band Machine Head released a cover of "Jizzlobber". Lullaby versions of "Easy", "Midlife Crisis", "A Small Victory" and "Kindergarten" were released in 2014 by music collective Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star, as part of an album of lullaby covers for Faith No More. In 2021, "Midlife Crisis" was covered by Breaking in a Sequence, a band formed by ex-Korn drummer David Silveria.

Track listing

Bonus discs

There were several different bonus discs released with various editions and formats of the album.

Free Concert in the Park

This disc came with the third and fourth pressings of the Australian release, it contains four tracks labeled to be from a free concert at Munich, Germany on November 9, 1992. Although the date is correct, the venue is not, as it was recorded at Grugahalle Essen..
  1. "Easy" – 3:06
  2. "Be Aggressive" – 4:12
  3. "Kindergarten" – 4:15
  4. "Mark Bowen" – 3:17

    Woodpecker from Mars

This disc was a promotional release on Limited Edition pressings of Angel Dust in France. On the back it reads "ne peut être vendu séparément, offert avec l'album 'Angel Dust' dans la limite des stocks disponibles", which translates to "offered with the album Angel Dust while stocks last, not to be sold separately"
  1. "Woodpecker from Mars"
  2. "Underwater Love"

    Midlife Crisis 12"

This disc was released with limited edition UK LPs as a double vinyl pack. The first disc lacked the tracks "Crack Hitler" and "Midnight Cowboy"; the track "Smaller and Smaller" appeared as the last track.
  1. "Midlife Crisis " – 3:56
  2. "Crack Hitler" – 4:39
  3. "Midnight Cowboy" – 4:13

    Interview disc

This disc was a promotional release on Limited Edition pressings of Angel Dust in Europe released on August 24, 1992, and was also released separately in a slimline case. The questions were printed inside the packaging with answers on the CD listing 18:41.

Personnel

Personnel taken from Angel Dust liner notes.
Faith No More
Production
  • Matt Wallace – producer, engineer, mixing
  • David Bryson – co-mixing
  • Adam Munoz, Craig Doubet, Gibbs Chapman, Lindsay Valentine, Nikki Tafrallin – assistant engineering
  • John Golden – mastering
  • Kim Champagne – artwork direction
  • Ross Halfin – band photo
  • Wernher Krutein – bird photo, Red Square photo adaptation
  • Mark Burnstein – meat photo

    Accolades

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Release histories

CD history

Cassette history