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. Album of the Year has been described by AllMusic as being "more straightforward musically than past releases." Three singles were released from the album: "Ashes to Ashes", "Last Cup of Sorrow", and "Stripsearch", all of which had accompanying music videos.
The album experienced success in some foreign countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Germany. It managed to top the charts in Australia and New Zealand, in addition to going Platinum in Australia. In the United States, however, it largely continued the band's declining critical and commercial response. "Last Cup of Sorrow" was the only single from the album to chart in the United States, after their previous album King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime failed to have any singles chart in the United States.
During 1997, different versions of the album were released in Australia, Europe and Japan, with these editions containing bonus B-sides and electronic remixes. In 2016, a remastered deluxe edition with most of the bonus material was released, as part of a reissue of the band's albums.
Album of the Year guitarist Jon Hudson joined the band in 1996, after the departure of Dean Menta.
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 compared to previous releases with Mike Patton, there was less of a break between this album and 1995's King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, which came out three years after their fourth album Angel Dust. Gould noted that a reason for this was since they cut short the tour for King for a Day...Fool for a Lifetime, instead of "[touring] it to death for a year or so until we're sick of each other." Gould said that they cut the tour short in order to focus on another album, believing that this would help give them some momentum going into it. When the band first started writing new material with Menta, most of the members were still focused on Faith No More rather than their side projects, unlike with the later writing sessions. As early demo work on Album of the Year was beginning between Mike Bordin, Bottum, Gould and Menta, Patton was busy performing with Mr. Bungle, who were in the midst of their Disco Volante run of shows. They wrote 12 songs with Menta, and eight ended up being completely discarded. 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." According to Gould, the songs they wrote with Menta were "too nice", saying "they were pop songs, but there wasn't enough feeling, enough balls." Bottum theorized that Patton didn't like the songs they wrote with Menta since "he's more inclined to not do something that's a little poppier."
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. A reason Gould was committed to working on the album without Bordin, Bottum and Patton was since Faith No More still contractually owed a few more albums to their record company, which was part of the major label system and owned by Warner Music Group. Hudson was a former member of the Oakland band Systems Collapse, and had first met Faith No More during the touring cycle for 1989's The Real Thing. Hudson remembered in 2015 that the band seemed disjointed, since the members were focusing their energies on other projects at that time. He added, "I felt like this might be their last record, so I wanted to make sure I enjoyed it as much as I could."
After Gould and Hudson spent time working on the album together, the other three members eventually laid down some basic tracks, with Bordin having finished his touring commitments with Black Sabbath by the time this happened. However, all five of them were never in the same city as each other during this period. Gould remembered that Patton would often say he would be coming over from Italy to work on the album, but would miss deadlines. Gould further said that Patton would only give them an hour of his time when he flew over from Italy. Patton's behavior led Gould to snap out at him in the studio, with Gould angrily saying to Patton "this is it. It isn't working. I'm out. I'm done." Bottum still continued to tour with Imperial Teen even after Bordin had finished touring with Black Sabbath. Gould said Bottum briefly gravitated back towards Faith No More, but was quickly "out of the band" again and wouldn't show up to rehearsals. He also recalls that Bottum was starting to do magazine interviews where he was claiming that Imperial Teen was now his main band. Gould remembered that, "Jon and me probably worked on that record the most. But everyone wanted me to work. Puffy [Mike Bordin] would call me up and tell me things like, 'Get Patton on board. We got to do this. We got to do this.' Everybody was getting me to fight everybody else's battles."
During early 1997, all five members finally 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. Patton had written two new songs while away in Italy with his wife, including "Home Sick Home". Patton wrote these songs in just a day, and he came up not only with the lyrics, but also the drums, guitar and bass.
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 [acoustic] drums in the choruses and moving them to the verses in Pro Tools. It gave the song a whole new life."
Once they finished recording, the songs were sent off to Masterdisk in New York to be mastered by Howie Weinberg, and 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. Faith No More's upcoming album was announced to the media around the time recording was completed in 1997, and a June release date had already been finalized. The album was still untitled at that point. In later press releases from closer to the release date, the title Album of the Year was revealed, and a track listing was given out which had the eventual B-sides "Light Up & Let Go" and "The Big Kahuna" as the 13th and 14th tracks. It was being touted as a return to the band's "heavy guitar" and "funky bass" sound.
Album of the Year features elements of several genres, including heavy metal, punk, boogie rock, circus music, country, doo-wop, funk, gothic rock, hip hop, Middle Eastern music, R&B, trip-hop and soul. However, it has been considered as less diverse than their previous release King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, which explored an even wider array of genres.
The album's music displayed a more melancholic sound overall than 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." In a September 1997 article focusing on the making of the album with Keyboard magazine, Gould further said, "Angel Dust was like a hurricane coming — a big, ugly storm. King for a Day was like when the storm was hitting you, with all this stuff flying all over the place. And this record... this record is kind of like digging through the wreckage and pulling out bodies afterwards." Shortly before Album of the Year was released, San Francisco paper East Bay Times claimed it was "by and large, a heavy metal album", and that other styles like punk and R&B have been "sprinkled in". In a July 1997 issue of CMJ, Scott Frampton described the album's overall genre as "bi-polar metal", claiming that it was similar to bands such as Mr. Bungle, Korn and Tool. He added that the boastful album title was fitting since "the band’s strange amalgam of sounds has always had a crazy audacity to it anyway." In a June 1997 issue of Hits magazine, Karen Gluber wrote that it "leans more towards avant-thrashism than the soul pop hybrid in which the group has dabbled, but their versatility is still very much on display here." In June 1997, Metal Hammer's Dan Silver believed it resembled King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime more than any other Faith No More album. He said it contrasted the more linear sound they had on The Real Thing, and was a continuation of their "increasingly eclectic [output] over the years, wildly ricocheting from one genre to the next, one mood to another." "Collision", "Stripsearch", "Ashes to Ashes" and "Naked in Front of the Computer" were cited by him as example of tracks on the album which all sounded different to each other, and he added that "variety is essentially their biggest asset".
In 2014, The Guardian labelled "Ashes to Ashes" as having "a memorably anthemic chorus that soared", while Christopher R. Weingarten of Spin characterized the whole album as having "epic, majestic choruses" in 2012. In 2016, Bottum remembered that the band were listening to many contemporary electronic artists during this period, including Tricky, Massive Attack, Portishead and DJ Shadow, and during the previous tour for King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, the band had often included in their setlists a cover of the Portishead song "Glory Box". A contemporary electronic sound can be heard on Album with the Year, with the single "Stripsearch". It has been described as a trip-hop song, and incorporates heavy metal guitars towards the end. "She Loves Me Not" is a soft R&B ballad drawing from doo-wop and lounge music. "Mouth to Mouth" uses rap-style vocals from Patton in the verses, and has elements of Middle Eastern music, which were inspired from Gould's trip to Albania during the making of the album. It has also been considered to have elements of circus music, with critics labeling it as reminiscent of Patton's other band Mr. Bungle, who were known to explore that style. "Helpless" is a slow paced acoustic ballad with distorted guitars during the chorus; it ends with Patton screaming for help as the music fades out. Karen Gluber of Hits magazine called it "spacey", while in June 1997 Canadian publication RPM wrote that both it and "She Loves Me Not" were songs which showcased Patton's "intense vocal skills". AllMusic described "Home Sick Home" as having a boogie rock sound, while Patton himself labelled it as "country music" during an October 1997 concert in Vancouver, Canada. The band had previously experimented with country music on Angel Dust and King for a Day...Fool for a Lifetime, with the songs "RV" and "Take this Bottle". Patton would continue to explore country/western sounds with his rock supergroup Tomahawk, who formed shortly after the 1998 disbandment of Faith No More. PopMatters wrote in 2016 that "Home Sick Home" had a conventional hard rock bridge which "partially undermined" the experimentation in the rest of the song, and that this was similar to how "Stripsearch" incorporated heavy metal guitars towards the end.
"Got that Feeling" and "Naked in Front of the Computer" are two of the more punk-influenced tracks; the songs are among some of the only songs in the Faith No More catalogue to be written solely by Mike Patton. In the September 1997 interview with Keyboard magazine, Billy Gould described "Got That Feeling" as being about a compulsive gambler, and said it would make for an "amazing" music video. In the early years of online filesharing, "Naked in Front of the Computer" was sometimes incorrectly labelled as being an Incubus song, with the title of "Naked". When asked about the meaning of "Naked in Front of the Computer", Gould replied to Keyboard magazine:
Actually, this song is about email. Patton is kind of obsessed with the idea of how people can communicate and have relationships over the computer without talking or ever meeting. So this is an extreme version of that concept. Funny thing is...the image of someone sitting naked in front of a computer might not have made sense to people a few years ago, but now everybody knows what it means. It's become part of our culture.
— Billy Gould (1997)
"She Loves Me Not" is the lightest song on the album, due to its R&B musical influence and falsetto vocals from Patton. It was to be the fourth single off the album, but the band ended before this could be accomplished. Despite this, it made an appearance on Faith No More's 2006 greatest hits compilation The Platinum Collection. When asked about the song, Gould replied:
This song almost didn't make it on the record. We almost didn't even record vocals for it because it's so different from all of the other songs. I wrote this song, and I was almost embarrassed to play it for anybody in the band because it's so soft – but at the same time it's a good song. It's like a Boyz II Men song or something. I didn't play it for anybody for, like, a half a year, and then finally I played it for Puffy. He thought we should give it a try, so I gave it to Patton, and he said, 'I wrote words, but they're pretty over-the-top.' But we went forward with it, and he really sang his ass off.
— Billy Gould (1997)
"Pristina" is a song written about the then ongoing conflicts in the Balkans (named after the capital of Kosovo), 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." In 1997, Gould also noted that "Pristina" required substantial EQ work in the studio to get all the instruments sounding clear, since "there are so many big open chords of distorted guitar, which doesn't leave much room for anything else." Kerrang! wrote in 1997 that the song's melodies were reminiscent of The Smashing Pumpkins. 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 [going on]; I didn’t want to just give [the track] to 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."
Multiple references to cinema are made 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. The "Stripsearch" line "F for Fake" references the 1973 film of the same name. "Helpless" 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 also 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. Like "Pristina", "Paths of Glory" is a slower song that uses heavy amounts of guitar distortion, with PopMatters also describing it as having a goth-influenced sound in 2016. Gould said in 1997 that "Paths of Glory" was "all about a mood. It's not: 'Entertain me.' It's a vibe." Some critics have considered it to be one of the weaker songs on the album, citing the sluggish tone of it. It was only performed four times, during the very early stages of the Album of the Year tour, being completely absent during the rest of the tour. When the band reunited in 2009, it did not return to their setlists. Gould has mentioned that the band almost never played the Angel Dust songs "Malpractice" and "Smaller and Smaller" since their mid-tempo nature didn't translate well to live settings, which could explain why they rarely played "Paths of Glory".
The opening track "Collision" was ranked by Metal Hammer as the fifth heaviest Faith No More song in 2016. 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 song's verses have samples of a Spanish-language broadcast from shortwave radio, with it being Patton's idea to include this. Patton and Gould both owned shortwave radios at the time, and Patton would often bring his with him on tours. Gould noted in 1997 that "you can get some really cool, eerie stuff" from them, noting that shortwave radio samples were also used on the 1994 Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral.
Billy Gould claimed in 1998 that Hudson came up with the original idea for the song, and the other members "changed it just a little bit". They added an electronic loop to the beginning of it, which Gould believed help make the song go from sounding like a Queensrÿche song to a Portishead song. At one show with Limp Bizkit in September 1997, Bottum jokingly said to the crowd that "Stripsearch" was based on a movie with Demi Moore that failed at the box office. He was likely referencing her recent film Striptease, and the song's cinematic sound.
Gould has said that his bass playing on "Last Cup of Sorrow" was influenced by dub music. He thought the song's slow, heavy sound was reminiscent of a local San Francisco band called Chrome, who he described in 1998 as "kind of like punk that was very heavy metal, but dark and foreboding... very cinematic". "Last Cup of Sorrow" has sounds throughout which Gould said resemble a toy piano. This idea started out as a loop from Gould while he was working on the song's bass parts, and it ended up being added to the song as a major rhythmic element. Patton has effects on his voice in the song, with Gould saying they "compressed the shit" out his voice. The song has hopeful yet introspective lyrics, with the narrator in the chorus encouraging one to finish a last cup of sorrow so they can possibly move onto something happier, with the line "you might surprise yourself" being repeated after the chorus. The band never explicitly said to themselves that Album of the Year was going to be their last album when they were making it, but some have still noted that the song's lyrics paralleled the band's eventual breakup not long after the album's release. Even though the lyrics were written entirely by Patton, Gould said in 1998 that they were all on the "same page" with him on it, adding that the lyrics are "depressing, but beautiful at the same time. As an album, it was our death record and it was something to feel, something we were going through." Both Jon Hudson and Mike Bordin have since stated that they subconsciously felt like Album of the Year could be their last album as they were making it. For "Last Cup of Sorrow", Patton reused the lyric "raise a glass and toast to the thing that hurts you the most". This lyric originally appeared in Mr. Bungle's song "Bloody Mary", from their 1988 demo Goddammit I Love America!. The song had different lyrical themes than "Last Cup of Sorrow", which revolved around female menstruation. A remix for "Last Cup of Sorrow" by German band Rammstein appeared on some editions of Album of the Year. Rammstein were labelmates of Faith No More at Slash Records, and a Faith No More remix of the Rammstein song "Du riechst so gut" was released the following year. Rammstein later sampled their "Last Cup of Sorrow" remix on "Nebel", the closing track of their 2001 album Mutter.
"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.
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? The Greatest Hits. It has often been mislabelled as being from the 1994–1995 King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime era sessions, and was even included on the 2016 deluxe edition for that album.
The photograph on the front cover depicts Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (who died on the eve of World War II), 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. Album of the Year's artwork was handled by the band and Katherine Delaney, and was done in 1997, after the album had been recorded and mixed. It was Gould's idea to incorporate Masaryk, since he had become fascinated with European history while on his travels throughout the area. Gould viewed Masaryk's death as signaling the end of an era for Czechoslovakia, since it used to be one of the richest countries in the world while he was in charge, before being plunged into turmoil during World War II. Regarding the usage of Masaryk's funeral in the artwork, Gould said in 2002, "if there is any symbolic importance, it is the depiction of the death of a 'golden age.'"
The artwork was reflected with the band frequently wearing black 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.
In an August 1997 Rolling Stone interview, Bottum claimed they chose the title Album of the Year as a joke, saying "we thought it was funny that anyone who'd write about the record would have to write Album of the Year."
In a 2001 interview at the Wâldrock Festival, Mike Patton said the band broke up after this album since they were starting to make "bad music". According to an April 2002 issue of Kerrang!, both Billy Gould and Mike Bordin regarded it as the band's best release. Bordin reflected on the album on its 25th anniversary in 2022, saying, "I did probably, deep down, expect that to be the last album, because I was contributing to it while I was on tour with Ozzy, which wasn’t a bad thing – I was grateful to be doing both. I was grateful that Bill was spending so much time in his laboratory, cooking things up. I liked the songs. I liked the performances. I liked what we were doing. I felt good about the album, and I was happy with how it came out."
Tracklist:
- Collision 03:24
- Stripsearch 04:30
- Last Cup of Sorrow 04:12
- Naked in Front of the Computer 02:08
- Helpless 05:27
- Mouth to Mouth 03:48
- Ashes to Ashes 03:37
- She Loves Me Not 03:30
- Got That Feeling 02:21
- Paths of Glory 04:17
- Home Sick Home 01:59
- Pristina 03:52
- Light Up and Let Go 02:18
- Big Kahuna 03:04
Time: 48:27
Recording information:
Recorded at Brilliant Studios, San Francisco, CA, and at Razor's Edge, San Francisco, CA.
Mixed at The Plant, Sausalito, CA.
Mastered at Masterdisk, New York, NY.
Roli Mosimann – production, mixing
Billy Gould – production
Faith No More – additional production
Paul Ceppaglia – mixing assistant
Atom – engineer
Mike Bogus – engineer
Daniel Presley – engineer
Jonathan Burnside – co-engineering
Howie Weinberg – mastering
Katherine Delaney – art direction, design
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