Classic Day – No Fun

The love language that appears on Faith No More’s King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime is more fitting to putting 10 different records into a playlist and setting that playlist on shuffle each time you reappear.

While Faith No More on their previous records had heavy metal elements through Angel Dust or the longer, more drawn out tracks like on The Real Thing, King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime is those same elements but reworked into an entirely new, almost impossible to pin down animal.

There is grace and also the ugliness, the eloquent paired with the muddied. Opening with “Get Out,” a rapid-fire almost villainous debut for sound. The percussion and guitar all played in these strong major chords and progressions are tuned low, fitting for the vocals to match in this poppy and energetic blast of performance.

The work from Mike Bordin on drums includes Roddy Bottum on keyboards and guitar. Billy Gould piles on with the bass and guitar, finding Trey Spruance on the guitar as well. The final component becomes Mike Patton who was well known for appearing in more bands than there are days in the year. Together as this conglomerate of sound, King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime is a shapeshifter of genres and styles but in the best way possible.

Tracks like “Star A.D.” could be fitting for a Japanese club bounce with these Ska-level horns and funk-fueled guitars. It is almost comedic at first until realizing that Faith No More are poetic through the structure and creation for the atmosphere. The audience is constantly being warped and pulled in these different directions, making King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime energized, but also intricate across each visit.

Other pieces like “Take This Bottle” have Patton delivering more of a ballad in the sense of vocal shouts and lyrical content. The guitars which focus on being a doo-wop, almost callback to early Rock ‘n Roll chord progression, the waves of sound here reflect beautifully. Patton is not just poetic here, but he describes, “Take this bottle, take this bottle and just walk away. The both of you, and let me feel the pain – I’ve done to you.” As the instrumentation ramps up and becomes more honed to matching his explosive vigor, the pianos and violin chords behind him sculpt pure passion to the record.

But finally, “Just A Man” is the stand-out for King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime as it combines the theatrics of Faith No More’s instrumental methods, but also the gorgeous nature that Patton can produce.

He explains, “And every night, I shut my eyes. So I don’t have to see the light, shining so bright. I’ll dream about a cloudy sky, about a cloudy sky,” while this symphonic orchestra constructs from the gloom below him. As Patton becomes more and more extreme in his delivery, a chorus accompanies him while he changes his demeanor, becoming more hopeful with each word.

He finishes by illustrating, “And every night, I shut my eyes but now I’ve got them open wide. Shining so bright, I’ll dream about a cloudy sky, about a cloudy sky.” Faith No More almost takes the audience to church with “Just A Man” and continues to repeat the rephrased chorus until it becomes the gospel to sonics.

King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime is by no means a quick record spanning in at 14 tracks and nearly an hour of both the extreme up’s and shallow low’s. Faith No More quickly makes King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime become a personal favorite for its engaging writing, solid instrumentation, and desperate need to be heard over and over again.

Listen To King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime Here!!! – Spotify/Amazon/iTunes