After Faith no More reunited (and it felt so good) back in 2009 (and played a fantastic show in Athens) the members of the band denied having any intention to write any new material, mostly through Mike Patton. Just when we were about to give up hope, the release of ‘Sol Invictus’ was announced, 18 years after ‘Album of the Year’. Maybe the aforementioned hesitance helps explain the disappointing resulting product.
The quality of ‘Sol Invictus’ is lower than expected. The elements that made Faith no More such a unique and undeniably great band are found here and there, such as the thousand voices of general Patton and Roddy Bottum’s always imaginative playing, but the compositions are mostly mediocre. The single ‘Superhero’ is very good, but it’s accompanied by barely a couple of good songs (‘Cone of Shame’, ‘Matador’). There’s too much filler for a 39 minute-long record, with flat production, especially for the guitar. The fact that ‘Sol Invictus’ can’t even be compared to the four masterpieces of the 1989-1997 period isn’t exactly a surprise, but still we expected much more, or at least I did.
