Faith No More
We Care A Lot

THE REVIEW

It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it...

Immature but meaningful, this is how "We Care A Lot" can be summarized, released in 1985, the first album by Faith No More, a Californian band formed three years earlier under the name Faith No Man and destined in the following years to achieve remarkable success in the so-called "crossover" scene thanks to the blend of rock, funky, hints of metal, and touches of hip-hop.

The album in question is certainly the least considered in the entire discography by both the public and critics: together with the subsequent "Introduce Yourself", it is also part of the period when Chuck Mosley was the vocalist, who was later replaced by the ingenious Mike Patton. The first track of the album is the eponymous We Care A Lot, which will be reworked and improved in the next album: those approaching the listening of "We Care A Lot" after having listened to "Introduce Yourself" (which indeed maintains the same line as "We Care", albeit much better in quality) can already get an idea of what the album in question consists of: we are indeed facing the most immature album of Faith No More (unsurprisingly, it's the first). The voice of Chuck Mosley was destined to improve, Mike Bordin on drums is still a bit raw, but many of the typical characteristics of the group's sound are already outlined. The album mainly contains fast and immediate songs, with pulsating bass and keyboards in the foreground, such as "The Jungle", "Why Do You Bother", "As The Worm Turns", the instrumental and aggressive "Pills For Breakfast", and "Arabian Disco", accompanied by more atypical pieces like the short instrumental "Jim" and songs like "New Beginnings" and "Mark Bowen", probably the less significant of the album but predecessors of the various "Edge Of The World", "Evidence" and "Stripsearch", the classic ballads in Faith No More style.

An album like "We Care A Lot" is therefore not the best choice for those who want to try a first approach with this group; the albums of the lavish Patton era or the very good (in my opinion) "Introduce Yourself" are more suitable. In conclusion, a good album, which, to be fully appreciated with all its limitations, perhaps requires an already acquired knowledge of the genre of music that one will listen to, but nevertheless a fitting choice for enthusiasts of the genre and for those who want to discover the more remote past of Faith No More.