Faith No More - Houston 2015

Faith No More returned to Houston's Bayou Music Center on July 28, 2015, bringing their wildly unpredictable combination of alternative metal, funk, punk, and experimental rock to the city during the North American tour supporting Sol Invictus. After years away from the road, seeing the band back in a relatively intimate Houston venue made the concert feel like a genuine event.

The band opened with “Cone of Shame,” immediately introducing the audience to the darker, heavier sound of Sol Invictus. “Be Aggressive” and “Caffeine” followed, before “Evidence” gave the set its first major change of pace.

Then came “Epic.” There was never any question which song would generate one of the biggest reactions of the night. Even though Faith No More had a catalog much stranger and deeper than its biggest hit, the familiar opening of “Epic” still produced an enormous response.

The band quickly moved back into deeper territory with “Black Friday,” “Everything's Ruined,” and “Midlife Crisis.” The latter became one of the evening's more bizarre moments when Mike Patton allowed the audience to sing before turning the chorus into an almost lounge-style performance.

“Cuckoo for Caca” brought the heavier side of the band back to the forefront, followed by “Easy,” their hugely successful cover of the Commodores classic. The contrast was classic Faith No More: one moment crushingly heavy, the next unexpectedly smooth and melodic.

The new material continued with “Separation Anxiety,” while “Spirit” reached all the way back to the Chuck Mosley era of the band. “King for a Day” and “Ashes to Ashes” then provided two particularly strong performances, with the latter sounding enormous in the Bayou Music Center.

“Superhero” closed the main set, giving the audience another taste of Sol Invictus before the band returned for the encore. The first encore song, “Motherfucker,” was about as subtle as its title suggests and gave Patton another opportunity to unleash his completely unhinged stage persona.

The band followed that with “As the Worm Turns,” reaching back to the earliest years of Faith No More. The final song was a surprisingly appropriate choice: a cover of the Bee Gees' “I Started a Joke,” performed in the kind of strange, theatrical style that only Faith No More could make feel completely natural.

What made the Houston concert so good was that Faith No More clearly had no interest in simply replaying the hits. “Epic” was there, but so were obscure early songs, brand-new material, bizarre covers, and songs from virtually every era of the band's career.

Mike Patton was the obvious focal point, but the entire band was exceptionally tight. Billy Gould's bass, Mike Bordin's drumming, Roddy Bottum's keyboards, and Jon Hudson's guitar gave Patton the foundation he needed to move between metal, funk, lounge music, punk, and outright weirdness.

For Houston fans, the July 28 performance was a reminder of why Faith No More had always been so difficult to categorize. They could be heavy without being a metal band, funky without being a funk band, and theatrical without turning into a novelty act. After years away, they returned to Bayou Music Center sounding completely alive—and completely unwilling to play by anybody else's rules.