Angel Dust is the fourth studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 8, 1992, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the follow-up to 1989's highly successful The Real Thing, and was the band's final album to feature guitarist Jim Martin. It was also the first album where vocalist Mike Patton had any substantial influence on the band's music, having been hired after the other band members had written and recorded everything for The Real Thing except vocals and most of the lyrics. The band stated that they wanted to move away from the funk metal style of their prior releases, towards a more "theatrical" sound.
In the United States, Angel Dust failed to match the commercial heights of The Real Thing. Upon release, it sold roughly 500,000 copies in the United States, while The Real Thing had been certified platinum in the United States for sales of over a million copies. However, in many other countries, it managed to outsell The Real Thing. Due to the international sales, it is Faith No More's best-selling album to date, having sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide. Despite selling less than The Real Thing in the United States, it still managed to debut at number 10 on the Billboard 200, making it the band's only top-ten album in the United States.
Background, title and artwork
Following the success of their previous album The Real Thing and its subsequent tour, Faith No More took a break before beginning work on the follow-up, Angel Dust. During this time Mike Patton rejoined his high-school band Mr. Bungle to record their eponymous debut album. They decided not to "play it safe" and instead took a different musical direction, much to the dismay of guitarist Jim Martin. Martin also did not like the title of the album as chosen by keyboardist Roddy Bottum. In an interview taken while they were in the studio he said that "Roddy [Bottum] wanted to name it Angel Dust, I don't know why, I just want you to know that if it's named Angel Dust, it didn't have anything to do with me." He also stated that Bottum was the one who came up with a basic concept of a bird front cover and a meat locker back cover.
Bottum stated that he chose the name because it "summed up what [they] did perfectly" in that "it's a really beautiful name for a really hideous drug and that should make people think." Similarly, the artwork contrasted one beautiful image with a gruesome one by depicting a soft blue airbrushed great egret on the front cover (photographed by Werner Krutein) while on the back is an image of a cow hanging on a meat hook (created by Mark Burnstein).
At one point, the band were considering naming the album Crack Hitler, in response to how the record label viewed it as potential "commercial suicide". Despite not choosing this name, a song on the album still had the same title. The band had kept the music from the label until the mixing stages. Bottum recalled that they got "really scared" once they heard the album, while Martin remembered that the president visited the studio one day and told the members he hoped none of them had bought houses. with large portion of the songs being written by either Billy Gould, Roddy Bottum, Mike Bordin, and for the first time, Mike Patton.
Album producer Matt Wallace stated there was a great deal of tension between Jim Martin and the rest of the band that made the recording sessions difficult. Speaking on the acrimony, Wallace said:
During their 1992 summer European tour, the band sometimes incorporated a disco jam in between songs, possibly as a jab towards Martin and how he viewed Angel Dust as "gay disco". Patton described "RV" as being a character sketch based on the "white-trash" people he was observing during the making of the album. He said in 1992, "it's the white trash saga: You wake up, you do nothing and you talk a lot of shit... and that's what the song does." "RV" incorporates spoken word elements from Patton, and in 1992, it was described by Music Express magazine as having a "David Lynch aura" to it, due to its unorthodox subject matter and structure. Patton has said the lyrics to "Midlife Crisis" were inspired by singer Madonna, and the song had the working title of "Madonna". Patton felt he was being "bombarded" with Madonna's image in the media at that time. He interpreted her constant reinvention and public presence as a sign of desperation and a struggle to remain relevant, which he channeled into the lyrics.
Songs with lyricists other than Patton include "Be Aggressive" by Roddy Bottum (about fellatio); "Everything's Ruined", by Mike Patton and Billy Gould; "Kindergarten" by Mike Patton and Roddy Bottum; and "Jizzlobber", by Jim Martin and Mike Patton, which according to Patton, is about his fear of imprisonment. However, Gould, in response to a question by a fan, suggested that the song is about a porn star. "Caffeine" lyrically appears to reference Patton's feelings during the sleep deprivation experiment. In an interview promoting Angel Dust, Patton mentioned that caffeine (via coffee) was the only drug he took. The single "Everything's Ruined" is one of the most piano-driven tracks, with the band considering it to be among the most accessible on the album. Bottum said that despite its accessibility, Patton's vocal stylings added another dimension to it, saying "it's radio friendly for sure, a pop song. But our singer always adds the unexpected and the twists". They would continue to explore doing songs in different genres on their next two releases, with 1995's King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime having a significant number of tracks which weren't written in the style of rock songs. In an August 1992 interview, Gould said "we don't play any style of music that you can put your finger on" and that "we don't have to be a heavy metal band". He added that, "in a way, it is kind of bad when
I say that because a lot of heavy metal people [get] pissed off". In another 1992 interview, Gould said the band were consciously trying to move away from the funk metal category, which they were often lumped into alongside similar bass-oriented artists such as Infectious Grooves, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Living Colour. Gould remembered in March 1995, "we started getting tapes from bands who were heavy metal funk bands and they were saying we were their main influence, it was horrible". In 1992 he added, "this whole funk metal thing is really disgusting. The last thing I ever want to be in is a funk metal band - we're gonna try to be anything except that.... I would say that any band which plays funk metal, I hate, and would safely say that most of the band feel the same way." In a 1992 MTV interview, Patton additionally noted his lack of interest towards the current music scene, saying "music sucks, I hate all music now. I really don't listen to music much anymore. I go to the music store and I look for like two hours, and usually I just end up going to the soundtracks section."
Recording process and outtakes
For the recording of Angel Dust, Faith No More were once again assisted by Matt Wallace, who had produced all of the group's previous studio recordings. They entered Coast Recorders in late 1991, originally set to track a total of 17 songs; however after writing two more while in studio ("Malpractice" being one of them), a total of 19 were recorded. At that time, the final song titles had not been chosen so they were often referred to by the following working titles, some of which continued to be used internally by the band, including on their live set lists:
- "Triplet" – "Caffeine"
- "Madonna" – "Midlife Crisis"
- "Macaroni and Cheese", "Country Western Song" – "RV"
- "Arabic", "The Arabian Song" – "Smaller and Smaller"
- "F Sharp" – "Kindergarten"
- "I Swallow" – "Be Aggressive" and produced by the band, but is given no producer credit (in contrast with the co-producer credit he is given for Angel Dust). Their cover of "Let's Lynch the Landlord" was done in the style of a lounge song, although the original Dead Kennedys version was a punk song. The "Let's Lynch the Landlord" cover later appeared on the Songs to Make Love to EP, along with "Das Schutzenfest".
1991 mini-tour and early live performances of Angel Dust songs
When the album was being written in 1991, the band went on a month-long mini-tour of Argentina, Brazil and Japan, where they debuted early versions of "The World Is Yours," "RV," and "Caffeine". This run of shows occurred between August and October 1991, and ended with a single show in Oakland, California on October 12, 1991, for the Day on the Green festival. The Day on the Green performance aired as part of an MTV special hosted by Karyn Bryant, along with performances by Metallica and Queensrÿche. The first performances of "The World Is Yours" and "RV" came during an August 31, 1991 concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the two songs would go on to be played several more times during this 1991 mini-tour, with "Caffeine" added during the tour. The other songs from the Angel Dust sessions only started being performed live in 1992. To date, the 1991 performances of "The World Is Yours" remain the only times the song is known to have been played live. The 1991 shows in Japan were Faith No More's first in the country, and they would tour Japan again in 1993 after the album had been released, although they did not do any further shows in Latin America following the album's release. In an August 1992 interview with Australian magazine Hot Metal, Patton claimed that while in Japan during 1991, a teenage Japanese fan handed him a VHS, telling him it was a present since she heard he liked "porno", and when Patton turned on the VHS, he discovered it had child pornography on it. Patton remarked, "I took the tape home and put it in my VCR and it was like 'Oh my God!' I didn't expect that at all, especially from a little girl. The fan who gave it to me was like a teenager and the girl in the film, she was probably 12, 11." amount and record label executives were concerned about the volume of samples used. She then tried to sue the band for using her voice without permission. There are also samples of Native American chanting, amongst the sound effects from Sound Ideas, in the background of "Smaller and Smaller". Patton considered "Smaller and Smaller" to have a "Dances With Wolves aesthetic" because of this sample, and noted they messed with the sample, which led to him labelling the song as "shameless culture rape". The chants were meant to resemble cheerleaders cheering on a football team, even though the protagonist in the song is someone performing oral sex. Some would later note similarities between "Be Aggressive" and Marilyn Manson's 2003 song "mOBSCENE", which had cheerleaders repeatedly chanting "Be Obscene".
Touring and promotion
Guns N' Roses tour in Europe and North America
Faith No More started the tour to promote Angel Dust shortly after the album's completion on the European leg of the Use Your Illusion Tour with Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden, which Bottum described as a "complete European vacation" due to their light concert schedule. A reason they were chosen for this tour was since Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose was a fan of The Real Thing, claiming in 1990 that Faith No More were the only band he was "jealous of". The band cited the Guns N' Roses shows as being the biggest they'd ever done, with the next biggest being a tour with Billy Idol in support of The Real Thing. Before the tour began, Gould joked that "it'll be interesting to see exactly how many bodyguards Axl Rose has, I want the inside story." In an interview taken on June 6, 1992, Gould reflected on the beginning of another touring cycle for Angel Dust and the shows with Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden, saying:
Angel Dust was met with extensive critical acclaim. One critic wrote that the album is "one of the more complex and simply confounding records ever released by a major label" and similarly, another called it "the most uncommercial follow-up to a hit record ever". The single "A Small Victory" is described as a song "which seems to run Madame Butterfly through Metallica and Nile Rodgers, reveals a developing facility for combining unlikely elements into startlingly original concoctions".
The songs "Malpractice" and "Jizzlobber" have been called "art-damaged death metal" and "nerve-frazzling apocalyptic rock" by contrast with the "accordion-propelled" Midnight Cowboy theme cover that follows. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B rating in 1992, commenting "is Angel Dust a brave slap in the face of record sales or a self-conscious attempt to unnerve newfound fans? Whatever it is, at least it’s not boring."
The album was also called an "Album of the Year" in 1992 by seven different publications in four countries, making the top 10 in three of them and the top position in one, and was also named the "Most Influential Album of all Time" by Kerrang! despite an initially lukewarm review. In August 2002, Mark Reed of Drowned in Sound labelled it "one of the best rock albums ever made", and considered it to be influential on bands such as Deftones, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. The 2009 book Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal describes the album as "a notoriously difficult album to listen to aside from the radio-friendly cover of the Commodores' 'Easy'." Alex Tefler of The Philadelphia Inquirer referred to Angel Dust as "one of the most deliriously strange records ever to appear on a major label" in 2010.
In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked Angel Dust as 65th on their list of "The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time". In March 2023, Rolling Stone also ranked the album's second track, "Caffeine", at number 55 on their "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Songs of All Time" list. In a 2018 Louder Sound article, Hoobastank singer Doug Robb listed it as one of the ten albums that changed his life, Oceansize frontman Mike Vennart has also named it one of the albums that changed his life. Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach told Louder Sound in 2020 that Angel Dust "changed my life and the way I saw music", claiming that it inspired him to incorporate melodic vocals into hardcore music. In 2003, System of a Down vocalist Serj Tankian called it their best album despite being less "commercially viable" than The Real Thing. He further noted that when he initially heard it in his mid-20s, it was the first hard rock music he was ever exposed to, which led to him becoming a fan of bands such as Metallica and Slayer. Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance labelled it as a "glorious record" in 2016. In a 2010 Artistdirect interview, Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno called it his favorite Faith No More album, saying "that was the record that made me think, 'This is one of the sickest bands.' The first album had a couple of good songs, but Angel Dust sounded savage to me. It sounded way more like a Mike Patton record. I feel like he had a lot more influence on it."
Covers
In February 2001, it was announced that Disturbed would be contributing a cover of "Midlife Crisis" for an upcoming Faith No More tribute album, and in April 2001, Disturbed covered the song live twice. The tribute album was additionally set to include covers by Fear Factory, Papa Roach and Taproot, but it never came to fruition due to issues between the different record labels of these bands. Disturbed's cover of "Midlife Crisis" was eventually released in 2009, through Covered, A Revolution in Sound, a covers album by various artists released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Warner Bros. Records, the parent label of both Disturbed and Faith No More. Disturbed's cover was also included on their own rarities album in 2011, titled The Lost Children. In 2002, a different tribute album for Faith No More was released by Underground Inc., titled Tribute of the Year. This tribute album featured mostly independent artists, rather than the more well-known artists announced for the cancelled 2001 tribute album. It included covers of "Everything's Ruined" by Daiquiri, "Kindergarten" by The Drowning Session, "Malpractice" by The Rib, "Be Aggressive" by Sump Pumps, "Jizzlobber" by Grim Faeries and "A Small Victory" by Germ Theory. "Midlife Crisis" was covered twice on the album; by Bile and Sickend, while the Angel Dust outtake "The World Is Yours" was also covered on the album by The Donkey Punch. In 2002, Norwegian symphonic black metal band Trail of Tears covered "Caffeine", as a bonus track for their album A New Dimension of Might. The Dillinger Escape Plan covered "Malpractice" during a December 2002 live show with Mike Patton in San Francisco. Patton and The Dillinger Escape Plan covered the song again in December 2017 in New York City, during the first of that band's three farewell concerts. Progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me covered the song on their 2006 album The Anatomy Of, in addition to covering it live. In 2003, American heavy metal band Machine Head released a cover of "Jizzlobber". Lullaby versions of "Easy", "Midlife Crisis", "A Small Victory" and "Kindergarten" were released in 2014 by music collective Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star, as part of an album of lullaby covers for Faith No More. In 2021, "Midlife Crisis" was covered by Breaking in a Sequence, a band formed by ex-Korn drummer David Silveria.
Appearances in other media
In 1994, the video for Faith No More's cover of "Easy" was used in the Beavis and Butt-Head episode "Rabies Scare". In 2002, "Be Aggressive" was featured in a Season 2 episode of the WB program Smallville, titled "Redux". The episode also featured the song "Ivanka", from Roddy Bottum's band Imperial Teen, which he formed in 1995. In October 2004, "Midlife Crisis" appeared in Tony Hawk's Underground 2. The game featured Axl Rose as the voice of a radio station host, however, Rose hosted the classic rock station K-DST, rather than Radio X, which focused on early 1990s rock music. In 2010, the song appeared as one of the tracks for the video game Rock Band 3.
Personnel
Personnel taken from Angel Dust liner notes.
Faith No More
- Mike Bordin – drums
- Roddy Bottum – keyboards
- Billy Gould – bass
- Jim Martin – guitar
- Mike Patton – vocals
Production
- Matt Wallace – producer, engineer, mixing
- David Bryson – co-mixing
- Adam Munoz, Craig Doubet, Gibbs Chapman, Lindsay Valentine, Nikki Tafrallin – assistant engineering
- John Golden – mastering
- Kim Champagne – artwork direction
- Ross Halfin – band photo
- Wernher Krutein – bird photo, Red Square photo adaptation
- Mark Burnstein – meat photo
Accolades
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="margin:0 1em 1em 0;"
|+ Accolades for Angel Dust
!Year
!Publication
!Country
!Accolade
!Rank
!class=unsortable|
|-
| align=center|1992
| Musik Express Sounds
| Germany
| "Albums of the Year"
| align=center|1
|
|-
| align=center|1992
| Raw
| United Kingdom
| "Albums of the Year"
| align=center|8
|
|-
| align=center|1992
| Vox
| United Kingdom
| "Albums of the Year"
| align=center|10
|
|-
| align=center|1992
| The Face
| United Kingdom
| "Albums of the Year"
| align=center|17
|
|-
| align=center|1992
| The Village Voice
| United States
| "Albums of the Year"
| align=center|26
|
|-
| align=center|1992
| Muziekkrant OOR
| Netherlands
| "Albums of the Year"
| align=center|36
|
|-
| align=center|1992
| Q
| United Kingdom
| "Albums of the Year"
| align=center|*
|
|-
| align=center|1995
| Raw
| United Kingdom
| "90 Essential Albums of the 90s"
| align=center|*
|
|-
| align=center|1996
| Visions
| Germany
| "The Best Albums 1991–96"
| align=center|*
|
|-
| align=center|1999
| Visions
| Germany
| "The Most Important Albums of the 90s"
| align=center|22
|
|-
| align=center|2000
| Terrorizer
| United Kingdom
| "The 100 Most Important Albums of the 90s"
| align=center|*
|
|-
| align=center|2003
| Kerrang!
| United Kingdom
| "50 Most Influential Albums of All Time"
| align=center|1
|
|-
| align=center|2022
| Guitar World
| United States
| "The 30 greatest rock guitar albums of 1992"
| align=center|2
|
|- class="sortbottom"
| colspan="6" style="font-size:85%; text-align:center;"|"*" denotes an unordered list.
|}
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|+ Weekly chart performance for Angel Dust
! scope="col"| Chart (1992)
! scope="col"| Peak<br />position
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
! scope="col"| Chart (2026)
! scope="col"| Peak<br />position
|-
! scope="row"| Greek Albums (IFPI)
| 11
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+ Year-end chart performance for Angel Dust
! scope="col"| Chart (1992)
! scope="col"| Position
|-
! scope="row"| Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)
| 33
|-
! scope="row"| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)
| 47
|-
! scope="row"| Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)
| 38
|}
Certifications
Release histories
- In 2008 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remastered re-released Angel Dust on CD and LP.
Vinyl history
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="margin:0 1em 1em 0;"
|+ Vinyl release history for Angel Dust
! Region
! Date
! Label
! Catalog
! Notes
!class=unsortable|
|}
Cassette history
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:0 1em 1em 0;"
|+ Cassette release history for Angel Dust
! Region
! Date
! Label
! Catalog
! Notes
! class=unsortable|