Faith No More bored into making comeback album

Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum says the band were bored into recording comeback album Sol Invictus.

It’s to be launched in May, six years after they reunited to play live shows and 18 years after previous studio outing Album Of The Year.

Bassist Billy Gould last year said he’d feared his colleagues couldn’t be persuaded into working on the project.

But Bottum tells FasterLouder: “We got really bored with what we were doing. We felt like there are a whole lot of people out there who look to us to be inspired by what we do artistically.

“So to be doing old songs on a big stage, over and over, felt kind of cheap and easy – and a little too safe a place to be.

“That’s not who we are. We’ve always pushed buttons, we’ve always rubbed against the grain, and we’ve always challenged things.”

Bottum says the material is “not as dense as we usually go” and reminds him of their “gothic” roots. “I get gut instincts from simple, stripped-down sounds, and there’s a lot of those moments on the record,” he reports.

“There’s a lot of places with really simple instrumentation and pianos. There’s a lot of pianos.”

He adds of frontman Mike Patton: “He’s done a super job – there’s some really fun wordplay that he does, and there’s a lot of referencing us as a core group.”

Sol Invictus is released on May 19 and headed up with the launch of a single entitled Superhero. FNM play this year’s Download festival at Donington on June 12-14.

Not only is one-time online news editor Martin an established rock journalist and drummer, but he’s also penned several books on music history, including SAHB Story: The Tale of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a band he once managed, and the best-selling Apollo Memories about the history of the legendary and infamous Glasgow Apollo. Martin has written for Classic Rock and Prog and at one time had written more articles for Louder than anyone else (we think he's second now). He’s appeared on TV and when not delving intro all things music, can be found travelling along the UK’s vast canal network.