My journey with Faith No More was short and sweet. Fall of ’97 and my dad brought me from a work trip a trio of CDs I loved with all my heart: The Prodigy’s The Fat of The Land, the soundtrack for Spawn, and Faith No More’s swansong Album of the year. All three albums helped me pull through a tough time in my life. It was the semester after Teresa had moved back to Pachuca, and my dear aunt in Tampico was going through chemo for breast cancer. I was trying to change my major to chemistry, trying to please my parents as they lamented no one in the family wanted to study chemical engineering, the career both of them chose.

I took two chemical engineering classes: inorganic chemistry and mass balance. They were tough and the groups were small, but I did ok. I didn’t change majors as my parents opposed this decision and it’s something I never understood why. Perhaps because the full course was only available in Monterrey and they didn’t want me to leave home. Or didn’t trust me. Who knows?

So, a whole semester devoted to Album of the year, and for Christmas, my dad got me King for a Day, fool for a lifetime, a true masterpiece that held the band’s talent to deftly change genres. If I thought my Autumn 97 semester was tough, my spring semester was even worse. Had a fallout with both my parents and I took a part time job so I could spend as little time as possible at home. I always wanted to have my own money, buy my own stuff, be a little more independent and the job, which was at a data centre in uni, was ok for the pay.

Things started improving with my parents and by the summer, we were getting along like gangbusters. We took a short trip with my brother to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. In Edinburgh, there was this CD shop in Waverley Market. It had a lot of cheap cds, and we found 2 for a tenner discounts. Got two albums by The Sundays, and two albums by Faith No More, Angel Dust and The Real Thing. Both albums were fascinating and I listened to Angel Dust first, then The Real Thing.

Listening to a band’s catalogue backwards is weird. You’d expect them to de-evolve as you traverse back in time, but in the case of Faith No More, you find how the weird, fringey stuff was always there, they just became more confident on their prowess to play with their own sound. I think the dynamics in the title track of their Mike Patton-debut is a perfect starting point. You get the musical powerhouse and his perfect vocals. What else can you ask for?

-Sam J. Valdés López