Faith No More: King For A Day/Fool For A Lifetime : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In 1989, just as morning in America was turning into the morning after, Faith No More released The Real Thing. Featuring the unlikely hit "Epic" ("You want it all, but you can't have it"), the album perfectly summed up the era of discontent that was dawning. That genre-morphing collection seamlessly fused punk, heavy metal and progressive rock with soul and rap and was a harbinger of alternative music to come from the likes of Pearl Jam, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nine Inch Nails. But like Gorbachev, Faith No More was subsumed by the revolution they helped make possible. Their follow-up, Angel Dust, a wildly uneven, self-consciously odd album, was a huge disappointment.

Saying King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime is not as disjointed as Angel Dust is like saying Eve was not as fractured as Sybil because she had fewer personalities. From the Spandau Ballet-like blue-eyed soul of "Star A.D." to the thrash metal of "Ugly in the Morning" to the Latin rhythms of "Caralho Voador" (on which singer Mike Patton coos in Portuguese à la João Gilberto), the album is almost desperately eclectic. The Real Thing's genre hopping was effortless.

Despite the loss of guitarist Jim Martin (his replacement, Trey Spruance, a more conventional, less interesting metal guitarist, left the band after recording this album) and a number of weak cuts like the campy "Just a Man" and the dreadfully silly "Cuckoo for Caca" ("Being good gets you stuff/Being stuff gets you good"), Faith No More's brilliance does shine through at moments. Among the best cuts are "Ricochet," a portentous anthem reminiscent of "Epic"; "Digging the Grave," which has a grungy feel that isn't completely ruined by Patton's histrionic screaming; "Take This Bottle," a country alchy ballad worthy of George Jones; and "King for a Day," a haunting reverie anchored by Roddy Bottum's atmospheric keyboards. One hopes that that last song's moving chorus – "Don't let me die with this silly look in my eyes" – doesn't prove to be Faith No More's epitaph.