We Care A Lot Reissue 10 Years!

WE STILL CARE A LOT!

Ten years on, Faith No More’s We Care A Lot: Deluxe Band Edition remains one of music's greatest resurrection jobs. Forgotten master tapes, Chuck Mosley’s triumphant return and a reminder that Faith No More were changing the rules long before Mike Patton arrived…

In 2016, while most legacy bands were busy flogging another greatest hits package, Faith No More did something far more interesting. They dug into their own DNA.

Hidden away in bassist Bill Gould’s basement were the original master tapes for We Care A Lot - the scrappy, fearless, genre-wrecking 1985 debut that had been out of print for two decades. What followed wasn’t just another remaster. It was a full-scale reclamation of the album that introduced the world to the gloriously dysfunctional chemistry of Chuck Mosley, Roddy Bottum, Jim Martin, Mike Bordin and Bill Gould.

Ten years later, We Care A Lot: Deluxe Band Edition stands as one of the finest archival releases ever assembled. Not because it polished history, but because it embraced every rough edge.

“This was an album that started as a demo, before any label had any interest in us,” explained Bill Gould when the reissue was announced. “When cleaning out my basement, I discovered the original master reels, and we all thought resurrecting this from the original tapes would be a great way to reintroduce We Care A Lot into the world.” Gould also stressed that the project reflected the band’s original DIY spirit: “We are releasing this in the same way as we recorded it… getting our hands deep into the nuts and bolts.” (NME)

That attitude runs through every second of the Deluxe Band Edition.

Rather than simply remastering the original ten tracks, longtime producer Matt Wallace returned to remix key songs including We Care A Lot, Pills For Breakfast and As The Worm Turns, giving them greater punch without sanding off the glorious weirdness. Four original demos, two feral live recordings from San Francisco’s I-Beam in 1986 and extensive liner notes from Roddy Bottum completed a package that felt less like a reissue and more like opening a time capsule. (NME)

For Wallace, revisiting those tapes was a chance to showcase just how inventive the young band already were before major labels came calling. The recordings captured five musicians who weren’t interested in fitting into punk, metal or funk - they wanted to smash them together.

Chuck Mosley perhaps summed it up best.

“With We Care A Lot, I always felt like I was part of something new and different than anything else out there at the time,” he reflected. “There was so much camaraderie… when the album was finished, it didn’t sound like anything else.” (Rebel Noise)

Looking back on the songwriting, Mosley described it as “a lot of collaboration”, crediting Gould, Bordin and Bottum as the driving musical forces while explaining that everybody’s fingerprints ended up on the songs.

And they really did.

Long before “alternative metal” existed as a marketing buzzword, Faith No More were already throwing together post-punk gloom, Sabbath riffs, funk basslines, no-wave keyboards, hardcore energy and absurdist humour. The title track became a college-radio anthem, while deeper cuts like Why Do You Bother?, The Jungle and Arabian Disco hinted at just how unpredictable the band would become.

Critics recognised just how important the package was.

Metal Hammer praised it as proof that Faith No More had been “inveterate genre-benders” from day one, calling it an essential document for tracing the band’s wonderfully scattershot evolution. (Louder)

Punk Rock Theory scored the release 8/10, celebrating the rediscovered demos, remixes and live material while encouraging fans who only knew the Mike Patton years to finally explore where the madness began. (Punk Rock Theory)

mxdwn argued that the remaster highlighted just how innovative the Chuck Mosley era really was, describing the album as a remarkably fresh blend of punk, post-punk and alternative metal whose influence had often been overshadowed by the Patton years. (mxdwn Music)

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Even among fans, the reassessment has only grown stronger over the past decade. Discussions across the Faith No More community regularly describe the Deluxe Band Edition as transformative, with many listeners arguing that hearing the remastered album completely changed their opinion of the band’s earliest work. Others have hailed We Care A Lot as an overlooked alternative masterpiece whose fearless collision of goth, punk, funk, industrial textures and heavy metal still sounds decades ahead of its time.

The biggest revelation of the reissue wasn’t that Faith No More eventually became one of the most influential bands in alternative music.

It was that they were already becoming that band in 1985.

Ten years after the Deluxe Band Edition gave We Care A Lot the resurrection it deserved, it remains the sound of five young outsiders refusing to colour inside anyone else’s lines. Before Mike Patton. Before nu-metal stole half their ideas.

Faith No More already cared a lot.

The rest of the world just needed another chance to catch up.