Ehhhhhh...
Faith No More is one of those bands where its execution (post-
The Real Thing, anyway) can be awful close to a lot of bands with good "indee cred" at times, with many of those "commissar approved" bands being on Mike Patton's label, Ipecac, and with Mike - and a couple of other current/past members - having either been in bands with members of some of those bands or contributed to works by members of those bands. I suspect this places them in a sort of uncanny valley because they just so happened to break into the mainstream for a spell, putting them into this awkward space of being both "mainstream alternative" and indee-adjacent. Corollary to this, they are another band where the preponderance of evidence leaves a distinct odor of folks feeling the need to be extra performative about disliking them because of this.
So, it becomes not enough to simply not like their music, which is a fine enough reason to not like their music on its own, but folks like to get almost political about it with thinly-veiled permutations of "they got popular for a while, so I must come up with extra-snarky reasons to dislike them." I just think back to the Soundgarden thread and the statement that "if The Jesus Lizard wrote this song, you'd be raving." I like 'em. Nothing wrong if you do, nothing wrong if you don't. But are the theatrical appeals to "INdEe CrEd" really necessary in 2025? Is the teenage tribalism and gatekeeping really all that "punk rock" when most of y'all are like pushing 60?
llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Thu Aug 07, 2025 12:29 am
It’s all just so bad. Music for mid-wits to wear shorts to.
I'll have you know, good fellow, that my professional, academic, and intellectual credentials speak for themselves, and that I, accordingly, refuse - I say, refuse! - to wear shorts.
Not crap for me, but I can see why they might grate on some folks' nerves. But I could say the same thing about Big Black... most of the world considers
them to be unlistenable. What makes our opinions more valid than theirs?