Faith No More
This Is It

THE REVIEW

A somewhat crazy invention is the image found on the cover of this album released in 2003. No choice could have been more fitting for everything they have represented for music in general, and hearing their entire career in this greatest hits CD collection is not bad. Of course, one cannot understand their state of mind in the various works as they moved from a light and amusing "funk metal" at the beginning, which paved the way for all crossover bands to come, to the dark and introspective tracks of "Angel dust", to the country, jazz, r&b, punk...etc. experiments of "King for a day", up to the last album which I haven't been able to listen to yet ("Album of the year").
Here, an attempt is made to traverse these eras in a homogeneous and chronological way with order and meticulousness. We start with the sparkling beginnings with the "old singer" Chuck Mosely who infused punk and very whimsical energy into their songs. The lineup remained unchanged for the first two albums "We care a lot" and "Introduce yourself", where their popularity slowly grew in the shadow of much more established bands at the time, like Guns and Metallica, to name a few. It was with their subsequent third album that the spark ignited, perhaps also due to the entry of Mike Patton (current leader of Tomahawk and Fantomas) in the role of singer. Thus was created that masterpiece of a song which was "Epic" and the fame grew. The market was teeming with bands of the same kind, but with parallel styles like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction, and furthermore, the international music scene was heating up with the advent of the explosive Rage Against The Machine, making the Faith No More music ideal for representing the ideologies and explosiveness of the music and society of the time.
With "Angel dust" the sound becomes heavier and more aggressive with an added bit of schizophrenia which decided the worldwide success of Faith No More, even though the album seems almost snubbed to cozy up to the most beautiful cover of "Easy" by the Commodores and avoid everything else.
From here we can move to "King for a day". An album a bit more subdued compared to previous works as it is too experimental in its way of being and listening experience, but capable of producing two masterpieces of their career such as "Evidence" and "Diggin' the grave" above all.
For the rest, "Last cup of sorrow" and "Ashes to ashes" seem to be the result of the experiments obtained from "King for a day" with some collateral results that make them pleasant, but nothing more, which conclude the career of Faith No More.
Regarding the "extras," which are a bit scarce, we can find a re-edition of "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath which I like a lot, a single like "As the worm turns" in live edition which denotes the concert proficiency of Faith, but it doesn't thrill me much (the song). Two other quite pleasant songs are "The Perfect Crime" from the soundtrack of "Bill & Ted's bogus journey" and "The cowboy song".

A really well-done booklet with the entire history of the band (in English though), the tracklist with the titles of the works containing the songs, and the discography of Faith No More.
I do not recommend this album to fans as it doesn't contain enough unreleased tracks to justify its purchase and the ones that are there are found much better in their original habitats (their albums). For "beginners," however, I recommend it to get to know the roots of the crossover and appreciate a historic band that has perished as it unfortunately seems all those from the '90s are doing. Sigh!