Thursday 18 March 2010

FAITH NO MORE – MIDLIFE CRISIS (SLASH)


FAITH NO MORE – MIDLIFE CRISIS (SLASH)

When I was 17 I claimed I was having a midlife crisis.  I genuinely thought I was experiencing what the crisis was all about.  Also it was a rousing prediction that I was set to die at the age of 34.  It was a cry for help.  So how annoying then that I am now mere weeks away from arriving at that age.  I know shit.

“Midlife Crisis” was the first Faith No More song that grabbed me.  It was the vocal gymnastics of Mike Patton that blew me away and the band name Faith No More actually caused me slight embarrassment.  Anything with the word “faith” in it was surely related to religion or at least some kind presentation of it.  And the last thing I ever needed in my life was faith or religion.

Faith No More benefited from the grunge ticket and the alternative rock explosion.  Even though they were heavy, they weren’t strictly metallers, this was music far more intricate and intelligent than that.  And this was a good time as the world was suddenly listening and open to suggestion.

The moment I clicked with this song was during an MTV News piece featuring the band on tour supporting Guns N’ Roses.  Seeing Patton perform the song live and smoothly switch between vocal styles was a revelation.  I had never seen anything like it before.  And the next opportunity I got, I bought the cassette single which came in a weird little fag packet type box entitled the “Crisis Cassette”.

With its Russian soldiers stood in Red Square cover there was something quite military about the band at this moment in addition to the general faith thing as mentioned above.  With only a small picture of the band to interrogate, it wasn’t sure whether those faces had been superimposed or not.  At this point, for all I knew, the band could be Russian.

“Midlife Crisis” is supposedly a song about Madonna, about a person entertaining press/publicity saturation in a manner that would make them appear desperate.  Its all about other people’s crisis (“I’m a perfectionist, my perfection is a scam”).

Released ahead of Angel Dust the additional songs are album tracks in the form of “Jizzlobber” and “Crack Hitler” which are two very heavy duty propositions which are anything but filler.  This single just flattened me.

On the road to victory.

Thesaurus moment: propitious.

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