Faith No More may very well be no more.
While FNM last performed back in 2016 with Chuck Mosley, Mike Patton hasn’t fronted the group since the conclusion of their Sol Invictus Tour in 2015. The ‘90s alternative rock heavyweights touted a global live return in 2020, but those plans were crushed by pandemic.
Then, the band was booked for concerts in 2021, but those too were scrapped as Patton tackled mental health issues, which he later explained was a diagnosis of agoraphobia.
In a new interview for Consequence of Sound’s Kyle Meredith With, Patton suggests he has moved on.
When asked whether there was a “sense of closure” during FNM’s dates in 2016, given that the band appears to no longer be active, he remarked: “I didn’t really think so at the time, but, yeah, maybe. And I think that we all kind of felt it, but it was unspoken.”
He continued: “And it’s funny: when you’ve been in a band or a musical situation for a period of time, you always, in the back of your head, you’re kind of thinking, ‘Well, maybe this is it.’ And I don’t mind that feeling. I don’t see it as a sad thing. I see it as being present and being able to really appreciate it while it’s happening.”
Patton’s comments could be news to his bandmates. Last year, founding member Billy Gould admitted he was unsure about the band’s future. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know,” Gould told Chile’s Radio Futuro.
The three-time Grammy-nominated act has released seven studio albums, but only one of those has dropped in the last quarter century, 2015’s Sol Invictus, which hit No. 15 on the Billboard 200. Sol Invictus is one of five titles that have cracked the all-genres albums chart, including a top 10 for 1992’s Angel Dust, reaching No. 9. The band has three appearances on the Billboard Hot 100, including a top 10 appearance with 1990’s breakout “Epic,” peaking at No. 9.
Patton officially joined Faith No More in 1988, following the departure of ex-singer Chuck Mosley, who died in 2017, aged 57. Mosley sang on FNM’s first two albums, 1985’s We Care A Lot and 1987’s Introduce Yourself.
Where the future of FNM remains uncertain, Patton has returned to his band Tomahawk, which will embark on a first tour in 13 years this summer, with the Melvins. Tomahawk, like Mr Bungle and Patton’s various other music outlets, are often described as “side projects.” That’s no entirely accurate, he says in the new podcast.
“I’d never really understood, and I had to figure this out very early on, was the concept of a side project, that’s assuming that there’s a main one,” Patton explains. “And for me, I really never had one. There were projects like Faith No More where I spent more time on, in terms of touring and promoting, quote-unquote, if you will, but everything that I’ve done was of equal importance to me. They just weren’t viewed that way. And the public, for whatever reason, needs to have a hierarchy kind of built in there just to make themselves feel better about it, I guess. I don’t know.”
Stream the interview here.