Blindspotting: Faith No More, "Angel Dust"

The Legacy: After scoring one of the unlikeliest Top 10 hits of the '80s with the cuckoo funk/rap/metal party "Epic," Faith No More did what all the best musical acts do after suddenly finding themselves in the mainstream — namely, they buckled down and resolved to do whatever the hell they wanted on their hotly anticipated follow-up. The label always hates it when this happens, and Slash/Reprise were no different; upon hearing the tapes that would eventually make up Angel Dust, legend has it that company execs warned the band that they were about to commit commercial suicide.

Somewhat surprisingly, that turned out to be very much not the case. Despite the fact that Angel Dust is one wild ride of a record — and one that was wild and weird in ways that didn't exactly correspond with the expectations set by its predecessor — fans responded anyway, sending it to No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and buying more than half a million copies. Of course, that sales total was still roughly half of what The Real Thing sold, a comedown largely due to Angel Dust's total lack of a single capable of accidentally surfing the zeitgeist as artfully as "Epic," so the label still got to say "we told you so" even though Faith No More completely beat the odds by racking up as many units as they did.

This artistic triumph didn't come without a cost, however. Guitarist Jim Martin was absolutely not a fan of the direction the band started heading in with Angel Dust, and basically checked the fuck out during the sessions, during which he was apparently either largely absent or unable/unwilling to play parts that were appropriate for the new material. His firing the following year started a long period of lineup flux for the group that lasted for the remainder of the decade — which was basically as long as Faith No More lasted before entering a period of extended hibernation.

First Impressions: I strenuously avoided all things Faith No More following "Epic," which struck me as a horrible hybrid of strange and annoying, so I didn't hear a note of Angel Dust in 1992. It's probably a good thing, because I can confidently say this record's charms would have been lost and wasted on my 18-year-old ass. It's an album that delights in wrongfooting the listener, whipsawing between volcanic aggression and goofy humor — sometimes within the same song — and often forsaking hooks in exchange for compositional complexity. It's also an album that doesn't really care whether you're willing to meet it halfway; get it or don't, but it's doing its thing for an hour and change, and there really aren't any breaks in the action to pull in any stragglers.

I have always been, and I remain, an ardent fan of classical pop songwriting, which is to say that I still derive enjoyment from hearing a songwriter slide the standard Tab A into the expected Slot B. I talk a lot about formula in this space, and how a formula becomes a formula because it's successful; that's generally how I feel about the best pop songs, which offer the thrill of recognition rather than discovery. That's still my wheelhouse now, but it's really the only place my head was at in '92, so I know Angel Dust would have sounded terribly self-indulgent to me. In defense of 18-year-old me, this album is self-indulgent — but the band had more than enough chops and intelligence to back it up. Put another way: There's a lot to be said for an album that continually keeps you guessing at where it's going and what the hell it's up to, but leads you confidently along the way. That's Angel Dust. It definitely isn't for everyone, and you really need to be willing to submit to its noisy, chaotic charms, but it's a defining musical achievement.

Hidden Gems: This is the type of record that I tend to appreciate more as a listening exercise than as a chunk of music that'll hit me in my gut, and a lot of what stands out to me here comes down to moments rather than whole songs. My favorite track is probably "A Small Victory," but it was also a single, so calling it any kind of hidden gem feels like more than a little bit of a reach. That's all fine, though — this is an album that's best listened to from start to finish anyway.