Faith No More: ‘Sol Invictus’ Wouldn’t Have Happened On A Major Label

March 3, 2015

Faith No More have just wrapped up an Australian tour with Soundwave Festival and are about to release Sol Invictus, their first new album in 18 years. For fans, the new record represents a very welcome Faith No More return, but according to the band, had they not decided to self-release the album, it may have never happened.

Sol Invictus will be release on singer Mike Patton’s own Ipecac Records on 15th May, a decision the band say was the only way the new record could have been realised. “We may not have done what we did if it was, ‘You got a deadline, the label wants this, you owe this to them’,” drummer Mike Bordin tells Music Feeds.

“We’ve already done all that and it’s not a whole lot of fun, especially doing Faith No More music which, by definition, is kind of whatever the hell we want it to be. That doesn’t sometimes line up with expectations, you know, of somebody’s business model for you.

“I don’t believe we would have done it, had we have been in that traditional model… Slavery, whatever you wanna call it. I don’t think we would have done it ’cause it wouldn’t have been that interesting.

“[This way] we’re just able to do what the hell we want to do and make it as good as we wanted it to be, rather than how everybody else thought it should be.”

Roddy Bottum adds that the band channeled such thoughts into their single Motherfucker, which is a deliberate jab at the music industry. “Definitely there’s hatred for the music industry, for sure,” he says.

“Motherfucker is one of the first sort of lyrical things we were putting together as a band and I think it came together in a way – like – talking about where we are, and the war zone we had been through in the nineties….sort of dealing with ‘the man’ so to speak and sort of like where we are today and the shift of that.”

According to the band, the new album is big, dramatic, self-contained and represents a maturity in their sound.

“You have to understand, it was recorded by us… written, arranged and performed obviously. Mixed by us, in our place,” explains Bordin. “I mean, this is really about as self-contained an effort as you’re gonna get and I’m super proud of every guy that did it. To me, the result… I couldn’t make it any better. And I want people to hear it for themselves.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly attributed Roddy Bottum’s comments to bassist Billy Gould who was not present for this interview.

Sol Invictus is out on 15th May.

Watch the full interview with Faith No More here!