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."
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. 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." 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." Gould said after Menta's firing "the momentum just shut down and everybody went off and started doing their side stuff."
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. 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.
Music
Style
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.
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 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. 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 Hammers 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." 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. 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. 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. When asked about the meaning of "Naked in Front of the Computer", Gould replied to Keyboard magazine: