Artist: Faith No More

Venue: Olympia Theatre, Dublin 

Date: 27 August 2009  

This band always were, and still are fecking nuts!! The tickets were like gold dust, selling within 5 minutes!! I was very excited in the lead up to this gig as it had been almost 18 years since I last set eyes on them, and I was not entirely disappointed.  

Mike Patton is like a cross between Jim Carey in ‘Ace Ventura’ and Jack Nicholson in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’.  He is a bit psychotics and very funny.  I must admit that I would only have recognised Mike Patton and Mike Bordin.  The rest of the lads just looked like your local bank managers (apart from the fact that they were wearing peach / baby blue wedding suits!!) 

After a long wait (the crowd were about to go ape-shit as there was over an hour between the support band and Faith No More), Faith No More took to the stage and started with the 'Midnight Cowboy' instrumental.   It took people by surprise and therefore took a little while for people to get into the groove.  However, as soon as Faith No More blasted out ‘The Real Thing’ it felt like they were home.  I had forgotten how good that song actually is!! 

In between the crowd shouting "you fat bastards" to the band and Mike Patton doing a full on stage dive, the band churned out ‘Land Of Sunshine’, ‘Caffeine’, ‘Surprise! You’re Dead’,  ‘Malpractice’, ‘Evidence’, ‘Last Cup Of Sorrow’, the theme tune from Eastenders (I kid you not!!), 'Easy', 'Midlife Crisis',  and 'Epic'.

 There was a lot of chit chat from the band to the crowd, which went down well, especially as the band seemed to know a bit about Ireland.  Mr Patton strutted the stage holding a shillelagh (definition: The shilelagh or shillelagh (pronounced "shil-LAY-lee") is an oak or blackthorn sapling made into a cudgel (club) used by faction fighters in years past.  It's named from the Shilelagh Forest which was rich in oak!!). 

Faith No More came back for 2 encores, which were a bit too mellow for my liking and the crowd were waiting for a 3^rd which didn’t happen due to the 11pm curfew.  This meant that the show ended on a bit of a low note and I was left a little disappointment that they didn’t play ‘We Care A Lot’ or ‘From Out Of Nowhere’. 

Faith No More are as relevant today as they were in the early 90’s.  I hope they realise this and work on releasing a new album. 

Review by Janice  

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