Album of the Year (Faith No More album)

Album of the Year guitarist Jon Hudson joined the band in 1996, after the departure of Dean Menta. Regarding Menta, Billy Gould said "We didn't fire Dean because he was an asshole, we didn't fire Dean because of anything, it was just because we couldn't write. And he had already written songs but it wasn't working. He toured fine."[2]

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."[3] Roddy Bottum similarly recalled "Everybody's schedule was hectic. And so it was a situation of making the record around people's other projects."[4]

When early demo work on Album of the Year was beginning between Mike Bordin, Bottum, Gould and Menta, Mike Patton was still performing with Mr. Bungle, who were in the midst of their Disco Volante run of shows.[3] 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."[5]

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").[6] Gould said after Menta's firing "the momentum just shut down and everybody went off and started doing their side stuff."[4] 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.[5] 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.[7] 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.[5][7][4]

The early writting sessions with Hudson yielded 12 songs, including "Ashes to Ashes" and "Paths of Glory". Gould sent a tape of "Ashes to Ashes" to Patton in Italy, so he could add lyrics to it.[4] 8 of these new songs written with Hudson were not included on the final album, due to being too "poppy".[4]

During early 1997, all five members reconvened in San Francisco with producer Roli Mosimann. Bottum reflects "We did the record in parts, more than as a whole. Then at the end of the process, or near the end, we got together."[8] Patton had written new songs while away in Italy with his wife, such as "Home Sick Home".[5]

Mosimann encouraged the band to utilize computer-based recording/editing software Pro Tools during the recording, something they had previously never 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."[9]

The album's music displayed a more melancholic sound overall compared to 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."[10] Patton commented "It's got more feelings and balance than our previous albums. Possibly it's darker too."[7]

Once recording was completed, the individual members spent time preparing for the upcoming tour in support of the album.[3] The impending Album of the Year tour would end up sidetracking a covers album Mike Patton had planned on doing with Mr. Bungle.[11]

"Naked in Front of the Computer" is one of the few songs in the Faith No More catalogue written solely by Mike Patton. When asked about the song's meaning, Billy Gould replied:

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, [4]

"She Loves Me Not" is the eighth song on the album. The song itself seems to draw its influence from lounge music. It was to be the fourth single off the album, but the band ended before this could be accomplished. It has also never been played live. Despite this, it made an appearance on Faith No More's 2006 greatest hits compilation The Platinum Collection. When asked about the song, Billy 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, [4]

"The Big Kahuna" and "Light Up & Let Go" were originally intended to appear on the album,[12] 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 didn't fit in with the rest of the album.[13] He also claimed the song's title was not a reference to the Big Kahuna restaurant from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.[13]

The band recorded approximately two dozen songs during the Album of the Year sessions.[14] However, no previously 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."[15]

Czechoslovakian president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (pictured in 1918) is featured on the cover.

The photograph on the front cover depicts Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, 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.

The artwork was reflected with the band frequently wearing 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,[16] which was a fan controlled site prior to the band's reformation in 2009.[17]

Regarding the title Album of the Year, Bottum said in a June 14, 1997 interview with MTV Europe that "It just seemed right. We've been away for a while. Coming back with a bang or a scream seemed to be effective to us, and a little bit funny."[18] In the same interview, Patton elaborated "I think if you can't see the humor in that, then you've got a problem."[18]

The album developed praise from the wider music community following the band's initial break-up in April 1998. In his retrospective review, Greg Prato of AllMusic gave the album a rating of four stars out of five and described it as being "a fitting way for one of alt-rock's most influential and important bands to end its career."[1] The linear notes for the 2003 compilation This Is It: The Best of Faith No More assert "If Angel Dust put an exclamation point on Faith No More's trademark sound, the release of their 1997 coda, Album of the Year, planted the ellipses at the end of a career that was as charismatic and riveting as it was jarring."[36] Stereogum referred to it as "a great album" in 2015, and pointed out there was a deeper level of maturity. They wrote "Album of the Year sounds 'mature', a blasphemous term for a band of self-professed oddballs who had a reputation as crass and scatological pranksters [...] All the humor on Album of the Year, right down to its title, feels a bit crestfallen and self-deprecating, as if the band had aged a decade since King for a Day."[37] In the PopMatters review for the 2016 deluxe edition, it is noted the album "was generally maligned as a disappointing swan song for Faith No More when it came out in 1997" and that "revisiting Album of the Year today is a more forgiving experience."[38] System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan listed it as an album that changed his life for a 2020 Metal Hammer feature on ten life changing albums.[39]

Singer Mike Patton criticized this era of Faith No More in late 90s and early 2000s interviews, with comments such as "[We split] Because we were starting to make bad music. And that's when you need to pull the plug. Our next record would have been a piece of shit."[40]

As of 2015, the album had sold 221,000 copies in the U.S.[41] This nearly matched the total for King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime but was a significantly lower figure than that of the other two albums featuring Mike Patton on vocals. On other charts, it fared much better. In Australia, it topped the ARIA charts on June 28, 1997, before being overtaken by Savage Garden's self-titled album on July 4, 1997.[42] It went Platinum in the country for sales of more than 70,000 copies.[43] It also peaked at #1 in New Zealand. The album only had slight impact in the UK charts but it did go Gold for sales of more than 100,000 copies. Album Of The Year has currently sold just over one million albums worldwide.

Singles