Faith No More's European and UK tour in support of Sol Invictus was five years ago.
FNM began their Sol Invictus tour in Japan, Australia and the USA before returning to Europe in May 2015. The sixth date was on Saturday June 6th in Berlin, Germany at the Zitadelle.
Faith No More were the grand masters, if not inventors, of the crossover.After 18 years they released their new album.In the Zitadelle Spandau it becomes clear: the new songs are working.
They turned the world of rock inside out in the 80s and 90s.Faith No More were the grand masters, if not the inventors, of the crossover, a musical bastard that unites a wide variety of styles from rock to metal to hip-hop, rigorously and unpredictably in folk, classical, jazz, even easy listening served.Now they are on Saturday in a blossom-white stage design full of lush flowers in the Spandau Citadel, and around 8,000 visitors pay homage to a band that can also score with their brand new songs.
What's going on here: a hippie party? A yoga group singing "Om"? Everyone is wearing white, there is a white curtain at the back and even the monitor boxes are covered with white fabric. Plus lush floral arrangements everywhere. Not exactly the standard stage decoration for seasoned rock bands, but who cares: it looks really pretty. In addition, the white goes well with the white-gray hair and beards of the Faith No More members, and it makes singer Mike Patton stand out nicely, because his short back hair is still full and dark brown.
The 47-year-old is the powerhouse of the California band. He tigers around on stage in a small radius, waving a megaphone as if it were a pistol and demonstrating the extreme versatility of his voice from the "Om" buzzing to extreme screeching. In no time he conjures up the great times of his band in the gaudy Citadel Spandau. In the nineties, Faith No More was one of the defining alternative rock formations that masterfully knew how to add pop, funk and rap elements to their sound. Power meets melody, hardness meets tenderness - this formula has led to some hits.
A perfect example of this is "Epic", with which the quintet sets a first acclaimed high point after about 20 minutes. Patton spits his rap lyrics over the hard zack rhythm of bass and drums, in order to dissolve the tension in the stretched chorus. Jon Hudson fires an aggro riff on the guitar, the keyboards take off. It still sounds great a quarter of a century after the song was created, but something from the time also fell.
The same goes for “Sol Invictus”, the recently released new album by Faith No More. It is their first in 18 years, the band was separated for a long time, only came back together in 2009 for a reunion tour. Similar to Blur's Brit-Pop colleagues , there have always been rumors of a new album. Because of the many band projects of the singers, it seemed rather unlikely in both cases. And then a record came. It sounds like it did before, without being embarrassing or like a pure self-copy. Which is certainly not the case with all the comeback albums of the current nineties revival.
Faith No More are rightly proud of the ten new pieces. They confidently open their appearance with the "Sol Invictus" title "Motherfucker" and play six more songs from the record in the following 90 minutes. Most are warmly received by the over-40 audience. So also "Sunny Side Up", which creates a welcome moment of relaxation with its acoustic guitar clamp ring accompaniment. Aside from the rummaging bass, it reminds a little of the Violent Femmes.
Between the songs, Mike Patton makes fun of barking a few German words like "Spandau", "very good" or "one, two, three" into the microphone, although his pronunciation seems to be inspired by Nazi films. Nobody resents him here, instead they sing along eagerly. On the other hand, the band interprets their old songs fairly true to the original, only on "Midlife Crisis" does they dare to experiment: All five musicians fall silent in the middle, and when the fans who continue to think already, that's it, the group starts the piece in a funny lard pop version again.
Faith No More will play the cover version of "Easy" again in the tried-and-tested piano-ballad-Schunkel manner - the disco ball on the stage sky glitters and throws spinning dots into the purple light. The clouds glow orange. It is couple hug time. Here it doesn't matter that you would actually like the concert to be a bit louder. The audience then grabs a few decibels themselves with the encore hit "We Care A Lot": The powerful "Wo-ooo-ohh" background choir would have done well over there in the Olympic Stadium at the Champions League final .
Andres Budtke
Claudia Antony
Motherfucker Be Aggressive Caffeine Evidence Epic Black Friday Spirit Midlife Crisis Everything's Ruined The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Easy (Commodores) Last Cup of Sorrow Separation Anxiety Matador Ashes to Ashes Superhero Sol Invictus This Guy's in Love With You (Burt Bacharach) We Care a Lot From the Dead
