Artist Interview

U.K. hardcore act Gallows will release their new album, 'Desolation Sounds,' on April 14 via Bridge 9 Records. In anticipation, the band has teamed up with Revolver to premiere the entire stream of the album right here, right now. Check it out below and let us know what you think in the comments!

To get 'Desolation Sounds,' visit Bridge 9's webstore. For more on Gallows, follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

It's always refreshing to find out that some of the biggest names in rock and roll are obsessive nerds. Whether it's about motorcycles or marine biology, geekish fandom makes us all human at the end of the day. So to discuss the upcoming Kirk Von Hammett Fear FestEvil with the Metallica guitarist himself is a dream. When it comes to horror, Hammett is a total fanboy, and is excited to discuss both the cool new features of his upcoming horror happening and how lovely it is to know Boris Karloff's daughter.

In fact, speaking to Hammett is such a pleasure that we decided it would be unfair to only give you the short snippets that have appeared in the latest Horror News segment of Revolver. Here is the interview in its entirety. Hail horror!

REVOLVER What about this year's Fear FestEvil is bigger, better, or scarier than last year's?
KIRK VON HAMMETT: Well, we're going for a much different experience this time around. There's a venue here in San Jose that has always intrigued me, the Winchester Mystery House. Me and my friends have always thought that would be a great place to have a party or an event. We have a great evening planned out. I'm hosting a dinner, with food and drinks and a tour of the Mystery House, and a murder mystery that everyone has a chance to solve. Various guests from the Fear FestEvil weekend are going to be giving out clues as to who or what the mystery is, and it's going to be a lot of fun. We have Cory Taylor signed on, as well as John 5 from Rob Zombie's band. It's going to be a small, intimate affair, and I'll be presiding over all of it. That's the first night. On Saturday and Sunday, we're going to be taking over the Rock Bar Theater, and I'm going to be bringing down a bunch of my collection. We'll have performing artists, a costume context, pretty much everything you'd see at a fear festival, only slightly scaled down. We'll have celebrity guests and celebrity panels. In the evening, we're going to have some great bands. I'm really happy to say we'll have Meshuggah headlining one night and High On Fire another night. We'll have Agnostic Front, Orchid, and a Swedish band, Blues Pills, and I believe this is going to be their first North American appearance. And we'll fit in a jam somewhere in there, with everyone involved.

That's a serious weekend you have planned.
I want to make it clear that this is not a typical festival. It's much more of an event rather than a convention. We don't want the Fear FestEvil to be any sort of specific thing. We wanted the Fear FestEvil event to fit any sort of aspiration I want to put my mind to.

The thing that stands out is the murder mystery. It seems like you're moving away from that standard slasher horror and focusing on that Edgar Allen Poe-ish gothic horror.
It's beginning to take on that tone, yeah. The experience on Friday will be geared more toward that kind of haunted house 1930s/1940s horror movie vibe. We'll be able to recreate that kind of vibe. The Winchester Mystery House is totally over-the-top gothic and a bona fide haunted house. It's on the national registry. We're going to dress it up quite a bit, so it's going to be quite different than it would be when you visit.

Do you have any special horror guests you might be able to tell us about?
Yeah, I have a long-running relationship with what I call the Hollywood Horror Royalty. For me to clarify, I have a great friendship with Boris Karloff's daughter Sarah, Lon Chaney Jr.'s son Ron Chaney, and Bela Lugosi Jr. And they're going to be on hand and giving away various clues to the mystery. I really, really love involving those people because they have such great stories, and it's a neat way for my and other generations to experience that kind of thing. These people are incredibly warm and lovely to deal with, and so they're going to be involved in the whole weekend.

It's interesting that your guests have such a horror pedigree, but the music lineup seems to focus solely on the metal. Meshuggah, Agnostic Front, High On Fire—none of these are real horror-themed bands.
I have to have a personal interest in the bands I take on. I have to feel like I have a musical connection to them. Blues Pills doesn't have a horror thread running through their music, but I believe in them. I could find a hundred bands who have The Misfits as their main source of inspiration, but that's not where I want to go. The person who would benefit from this the most would be the horror metal fan, but I also want to appeal to the hardcore metal fan, which I am as well. I'm opening it up to be a little more inclusive.

That's fair. Though they've always had the H.P. Lovecraft references, Metallica has never been a very horror-centric band, but you've always been known for your horror fandom.
Yeah. I mean, we've been very covert about it. But I've always been a horror fan, Cliff Burton was always a horror fan, and even Rob Trujillo has a history with comics. He's always been an amazing cartoonist! So it's always been alive and well in Metallica. As long as I'm living and breathing, it'll be alive and well in Metallica. And you know how it is with my band—we don't want to be too much of one thing.

One last thing I wanted to ask about was your toy line. I notice you have masks of your Kirk Von Hammett persona on there. What would you do if a trick-or-treater came to your door as Kirk Von Hammett?
I would laaaugh and laaaugh! I would be so tickled, man! Because, like, when I'm in that Kirk Von Hammett mode, I turn into a totally different person. And I'd hope that whoever came to the door in a Kirk Von Hammett mask would have the same feeling. He would be this slimy, insane, mischievous that does the unpredictable and has fun at it. That's how I see my KVH persona. I like to have fun with it all.

This year's Fest FestEvil takes places in San Jose, California on April  and 12. For more info, visit their website.

The following article is an excerpt from Revolver's April/May 2015 issue.

by J. Bennett

Floor Jansen was at home in the Netherlands on a Saturday morning in September of 2012 when she got the call. Multiplatinum Finnish symphonic metal outfit Nightwish were on tour in the U.S. and had a serious problem: Their singer, Anette Olzon, was sick and couldn't perform. When the other members of Nightwish got tourmates Alissa White-Gluz (currently of Arch Enemy) and Elize Ryd (of Amaranthe)—both of whom were singing with Nightwish's support band, Kamelot, at the time—to fill in one night, Olzon took to the Internet to express her dismay. Two days later, Olzon was out and Jansen was in, at least for the rest of the tour. "I had to leave on Saturday, the same day they called, and the first show was on Monday," Jansen explains. "I knew their music, but I was not able to sing anything without having the lyrics. And their latest album at that point, 'Imaginaerum,' I never even heard."

With the help of lyric sheets and some very understanding fans, Jansen pulled it off. She finished the tour and was asked to do more shows before being officially asked to join as an official member—along with British uilleann pipes player and longtime Nightwish collaborator Troy Donockley—in 2013. Fast-forward to the present day, and Nightwish are set to release 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful,' their first album with Jansen at the helm. As she tells Revolver, the Dutch vocalist is so committed to her new gig that she moved to Finland and is in the process of learning the incredibly difficult Finnish language.

REVOLVER Were you surprised to get the call from Nightwish asking you to go on tour with them?
FLOOR JANSEN Yes. I had no idea what was going on with them at that time, so you can imagine—a hundred thoughts and emotions went through my system. It was such a heavy thing to do that it wasn't until the weeks after the tour, when I came home again, that I started to realize the full extent of what just happened. [Laughs] Whoa, you know. I didn't dream it.

It was a real trial by fire. You had to have lyric sheets onstage with you at first.
Of course. It's 90 minutes of music—you cannot learn it in 84 hours. It was crazy because the band was having a very high-stress situation with the previous singer. Somewhere around one o'clock local time on Sunday morning, I landed in Salt Lake City. The tour bus drove by the hotel at four in the morning, and that's when I joined the guys. Sunday was a travel day, and Monday was the first show in Seattle. Of course that show wasn't perfect, so we all were very happy that the Seattle audience was accepting of the situation. They helped me. But I had lyrics onstage and cues from the band and the audience was very cool. It was a special night, and every night it became better.

It seems like Nightwish fans have accepted you much more readily than they did your predecessor, Anette Olzon—who of course replaced the band's original singer, Tarja Turunen. Have you felt generally welcomed by the fans?
Amazingly, yes. The good thing about the sudden start is that I didn't have time to start worrying about anything other than, "Am I gonna be able to do the show?" I didn't think about if the fans would accept me or even if the band would accept me. I just thought about getting the show right. But the fans were super-receptive and friendly to our situation and to me right away. I know that Anette had a much more difficult start, but I don't know why this is. People are so dedicated to this band, you know? So a singer— the right one—really matters. People are really passionate about it. They're also passionate when they don't like it, but there's not much I can do about that case [laughs]. We have a saying in the Netherlands: "The higher the tree, the more wind you catch." But the majority of the reactions have been very positive, and that's the important thing.

For the rest, pick up our April/May 2015 issue. It is available for purchase in our webstore.

The following article is an excerpt from Revolver's April/May 2015 issue.

by Sammi Chichester

When Roger Miret picks up Revolver's call in Arizona, he's already on his third cup of coffee. Needless to say, the Agnostic Front singer is alert and chatty. But it's not just the caffeine that has the vocalist wound up; it's also the release of Agnostic Front's latest record, 'The American Dream Died.' "I just think I love the times that we're living in right now. This record is so relevant, real and genuine," says Miret. "It kind of feels like the time I wrote 'Victim in Pain.'"

While that groundbreaking 1984 hardcore album was rooted in political events of the era, according to Miret, politics has always been a big part of what his band is about. "From day one we've been singing about being anti- war, anti-society, anti-establishment. We fight oppression and overcome oppression. We're a people's band."

Indeed, on 'The American Dream Died' Agnostic Front continue to be a band for the people. The 16-track record, which features Madball's Freddy Cricien, H2O's Toby Morse and Sick of it All's Lou Koller as guests on "Never Walk Alone," boasts the kind of blistering hardcore punk songs that fans have come to know and love from the New York stalwarts.

"I've been feeling for the first time in a long time super angry at stuff again. I have no problem writing songs about New York City or unity—I'm passionate about those things. But watching the world and what has going on in the past seven years, I've been super angry and I want to voice my opinion on it," Miret says. Revolver was only too happy to give him a soapbox from which to rant.

REVOLVER Why do you feel the American dream is dead?
ROGER MIRET I came from Cuba when I was four years old. My family was seeking the three big things this country stands for: Liberty, justice and freedom. I just feel little by little these three major things—and I'm not talking about material stuff—are being stripped away from you. Some of it is true, like that the housing market destroyed people and the economy. But there is so much injustice, and our rights are being taken away from us. My theory is 20 years from now they're going to look at the Constitution and not know what the fuck it is.

Coming from Cuba, what was it like growing up in America?
It was really hard. I was four, my brother was two, my sister was months old, and my mother was 20. We wanted to get away from the Castro regime because we didn't agree with him. We came here and lived in poor neighborhoods. In school they put me in classes with slower kids until I learned how to speak English. I grew up in bad ways, but I went through it and fought it. I like to believe we're all in a better place now.

What was the inspiration behind 'The American Dream Died' track "Enough Is Enough"?
Watching the news. I was doing some research on my computer, because the media is very biased toward a political party, which- ever one it may be. I was just feeling like, "When is enough going to be enough? When are people going to fucking stand up for them- selves? What's it going to take in this country for people to do something?" Apparently it's going to take a lot. It's like the Thomas Jefferson quote—a little rebellion is good.

For the rest, pick up our April/May 2015 issue. It is available for purchase in our webstore.

The following article is an excerpt from Revolver's April/May 2015 issue.

By Richard Bienstock

If you're curious as to what a day in the life of an honest-to-god rock and roll band circa 2015 is like, look no further than the Beverly Hills that, until recently, was the shared residence of We Are Harlot's Danny Warsnop, Jeff George and Bruno Argra.

"Our alarms were set for 3:40 P.M. every day," recounts singer Worsnop. "That gave us 20 minutes to get dressed, get out the door and get to the bar at the end of the street, 'cause happy hour started at four. We'd drink for a bunch of hours, and at around 10 P.M. we'd go back to the house and write a song. Then it was back to the bars until closing time. After that, back to the house with a bunch of friends, where things would get really wild and really, um, we'll say 'illegal.' Then we'd crash out and, come 3:40 P.M., do it all again."

The fruits of We Are Harlot's labor—if it could indeed be called labor—can be heard on their recently released self-titled debut. And, much like the constant party that seemingly surrounded the writing process for these songs, We Are Harlot is a raucous, rowdy and, yes, wild affair. It's a 12-song collection of high-octane, top-down spitfire rockers and arena-ready ballads that explodes with piledriving riffs, classic '70s and '80s swagger and huge, hooky choruses. Throughout, the rhythm section of drummer Agra and bassist Brian Weaver provide ample swing and propulsion, while George splatters the proceedings with oodles of shredtastic guitar leads.

But the biggest surprise is the unusually melodic vocal performance from Worsnop, who, until now, was known more for the raw throated screaming and guttural grunts he contributed to his former band, Asking Alexandria. Despite rising to become one of the most dynamic and charismatic frontmen in metalcore, Worsnop says that his musical background is actually quite different.

"I didn't get into really heavy stuff until I was around 16 or 17," he says. "And even then it wasn't so extreme—it was stuff like Slipknot, Korn, Pantera. But my upbringing was rock and roll and the blues. My biggest inspirations were guys like Steven Tyler and Mick Jagger. I was a big Bryan Adams fan. I loved Michael Jackson. And my grandfather was a blues singer, which was a huge influence on me."

In fact, it was Worsnop's desire to explore these influences that first planted the seed for We Are Harlot...

For the rest, pick up our April/May 2015 issue. It is available for purchase in our webstore.

The following article is from Revolver's April/May 2015 issue. It is available for purchase in our webstore.

"We're a well-oiled machine right now, for sure," says singer and keyboardist Tommy Rogers speaking to Revolver from Basement Recording in North Carolina, where Between the Buried and Me are currently putting the finishing touches on 'Coma Ecliptic,' their upcoming seventh studio album of original material. And while the progressive metal act seemed to reach the heights of sheer progginess on their last two releases, the conceptually linked 'The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues' EP and the full length 'The Parallax II: Future Sequence,' Rogers reports that creating the new record has been, in comparison, "way more work. Way more."

As for why the writing and recording process has been so intense this time, Rogers says it is partly due to the fact that "the material is very different for us, and we're pushing ourselves. I wouldn't say it's a new sound, but it's not as heavy and it's weirder at times. More grown-up. I think it's the biggest stylistic change for us since the period from [2005's] 'Alaska' to [2007's] 'Colors.'"

Musically, Rogers reports that the new material focuses "a lot more on melody." And vocally, he found inspiration in an unlikely source: the fantastical soundtrack work of Danny Elfman, best known for scoring Tim Burton movies like 'Edward Scissorhands' and 'The Nightmare Before Christmas.' "A few years ago I saw Danny play with a full orchestra, and he was singing all his material from the Tim Burton movies," Rogers says. "There was this certain intensity he had that I'd never seen before from someone who wasn't screaming. That stuck with me and motivated me to try different things vocally—to be intense and aggressive without always going for the big growler scream."

Much like on the 'Parallax' EP and full length, the songs on 'Coma Ecliptic' are linked by a conceptual story. Explains Rogers, "The short version is it's about a man who goes into a self-induced coma and then travels through all his past lives to see if he can find a better life. But he finds out that none of those lives were ideal, either. It's a 'grass is always greener' type of thing. The whole story has a really dark and uneasy vibe that was inspired by the old 'Twilight Zone' series and David Lynch movies."

Though Rogers says that due to the band's busy recording schedule he "still hasn't had time to sit back and listen to the whole album straight through," he's excited for what looks to be a new step in Between the Buried and Me's evolution. "One of the most fun things about being in this band is that we're constantly pushing and growing with each other. I always think we're gonna run out of things to say, but we never do. We just get stronger and stronger with each record." RICHARD BIENSTOCK

The following article is from Revolver's April/May 2015 issue. It is available for purchase in our webstore.

We're om kind of the beginning stages of the finishing stages, if that makes any sense," says Slayer bassist and vocalist Tom Araya of the legendary thrash band's forthcoming full-length. "We're doing the mixing and mastering now, but we still need to sit down and figure out the album title, the album cover, the song titles, and the song list. We've recorded 13 songs for it; we'll probably put ten on there, but who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky and we'll put all 13 on there!"

The as-yet-untitled album, the band's 11th studio LP—and their first for Nuclear Blast—was produced by Terry Date (Pantera, Soundgarden, Korn) over a four-month period at Hollywood's Henson Studios. "Terry's been a big part of it," says Araya. "He's been the 'unbiased ears,' which is what you really want when you're working with someone, and I think he got some really great performances out of us. It was a pleasure working with him."

The tracks for the album were primarily recorded by Araya, guitarist Kerry King and drummer Paul Bostaph, the latter of whom rejoined the band in 2013. It's the first album Slayer has made primarily without the help of guitarist and co-founder Jeff Hanneman—who died of alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver in 2013—and Araya says it was difficult to get used to the absence of his longtime colleague.

"Ever since his passing, it's been like that—just odd and strange, because he's never gonna be there again, you know?" he says, with a noticeable sadness in his voice. "Even when we were doing stuff without him while he was still alive, that felt strange. Yeah, I missed him during the process. But the way things turned out, I think he was definitely a part of it, even if he wasn't there physically."

Hanneman is physically present on one unnamed track, however. "The whole process of this album started three years ago, when Jeff was still a part of it," says Araya. "There is one track on there that we recorded with him, that he did play on, which was completely done except we hadn't finalized the vocals for it. So we were fortunate to have something that he had participated in."

Exodus guitarist Gary Holt, who filled in on tour for Hanneman during his illness and after his untimely death, was invited to record solos for many of the tracks. "Kerry asked Gary to come in, and he shredded some leads on quite a few songs," Araya recalls. "He came down and damaged his wrist. I'm serious! Well, he didn't damage it, but his wrist was pretty sore—that's what he claimed," he laughs. "Gary gave it all—and he was a man about it, too!"

Lyrically, Araya says the album will cover "the usual topics—conflict, confrontation, religion. It's all about the social ills that dominate humankind. It's a Slayer record, you know what I mean?" he laughs. "It's gonna be a really, really powerful record, so let everybody know!" DAN EPSTEIN

Doom act Royal Thunder will release their new album, 'Crooked Doors,' on April 7 via Relapse Records. In anticipation, the band has teamed up with Revolver to premiere their new song, "Wake Up." Check it out below and let us know what you think in the comments!

MORE ROYAL THUNDER: The band is featured in Revolver's April/May issue.

For more on Royal Thunder, follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Guitarist Chris Broderick and drummer Shawn Drover, formerly of Megadeth, have announced their new band, Act of Defiance. The lineup consists of Broderick, Drover, ex-Scar the Martyr vocalist Henry Derek, and bassist Matt Bachand. Here, Broderick discusses the upcoming debut, how he goes through the recording process when he's in the studio, how he feels about live performances, and much more. Read the what the guitarist had to say below and let us know what you think in the comments!

Also, Revolver's own Stephanie Cabral was on hand to catch the group in the studio. Check out the photos she captured for us below–you can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

REVOLVER Can you describe the recording process for your debut album and what producer Zeuss brought to to table?
CHRIS BRODERICK To start Shawn and I started off by demoing our material on our own, passing them back and fourth to get constructive criticism from each other. At this point while working on finalizing our deal we wanted to find an engineer that had a modern but natural sound to there mixes and Zeuss came out the best fit for us. The records he did for Arsis and Sanctuary to Shadows Fall all sound perfect for our style of music. From there Shawn met Zeuss in Connecticut the first week of February to get drum tones and get final takes for the CD which came out sounding killer! As I track guitars, I am continually conferencing with Zeuss on song format and other logistics as well as to prepare for the final mix which is getting me really excited about how the final songs will sound, because when you demo a song it's funny how different it can come out by the final version.

With tracking guitars, what are usually the most challenging aspects for you and how critical are you of your own performance?
For me it's definitely the performance and then the tone. I am very critical though I don't want it to sound like a machine, so I like to focus on getting matching takes as tight as possible and not relying on any sort of editing. As of right now I have quad tracked all the rhythms which when tracking that way is where you have to be critical and get each take to match the next dead on. The solo's are in the process of being finished and I am very excited to see what people think of what I have come up with. After that I still have some classical, and clean guitar parts to track and then we move on to re-amping where you listen to how all the instruments and vocals sound together and set your guitar tone to sound best for the mix.

What has the overall studio experience been like working with Henry and Matt and what do they add to the whole process as a whole?
It has been awesome! I have been meeting with Henry to track vocals pretty consistently for the past few months. From the demos to the final takes that we are now working on and I feel like this has helped us in so many ways. For one I have gotten to know Henry a lot better and he is easy to get along with and has no ego what so ever.  Two, I feel like both of our skills have grown over this period. I have figured out how to communicate with him in terms of what I might be looking for out of his voice and he is just  singing his ass off! I think people are really going to be surprised by what Henry brings to the table. The dude's metal range can go from Bruce Dickinson to Chuck Billy to  Mikael Åkerfeldt to early Phil Anselmo, and he can even do Norwegian black metal-style vocals if we asked him to. I have met Matt numerous times and though he was a late addition to our AOD party, he has been a huge help. He's a quadruple threat as a talented guitarist, bassist, singer and song writer. Matt's bass lines have their own personality and individualism that we want in our music. Both Henry  and Matt are recent editions to the writing process, but Henry has written a decent amount of the lyrics and I can't wait to see what he and Matt bring creatively to the next CD.

What's your favorite part of being in the studio and what do you find to be the most grueling?
My favorite part of being in the studio is any creative process where you have the spark of imagination that totally elevates a song either on your own or through collaboration with others. It's cool to see what ideas Shawn, Henry or Matt might have to take the song to another level. Definitely the most grueling part is when you are nit-picking performances and re-taking tracks over and over again for a 2% gain in it's sound [laughs].

How do you feel this new material stacks up when compared to all of your previous studio recordings?
With the debut Act Of Defiance release fans can expect mix of thrash metal with elements of other subgenres of mixed in. I think of it like we are the ambassadors of all types of metal [laughs]. It has elements of classical music, but is really heavy at the same time. The cool thing about where we are at is that this is all about the music. We aren't worried about any amount of fame, or income, we just wanted a chance to get our music out and just hope people dig it.

FOR MORE ACT OF DEFIANCE: Sirius XM's Jose Mangin Interviews Chris Broderick

Do you prefer to be a live musician or a studio musician?
I prefer a mix to tell you the truth. Live, obviously, you get the crowd interaction that I love but the travel can get old quick. Being in the studio, has a totally cool creative side to it, but it can get monotonous with the tracking side of things.

When you perform these songs live, do you think you will purposely stick to exactly how it's played on the record or vary it up to the energy of the live show?
I have always thought that when music is released publicly that it becomes the fan's music as much as it is yours and because of that you should stick to the recorded music as closely as possible. With that being said though, I always look for ways that something can energize a live show, things such as bumping up the tempo, or adding sections for crowd participation. In my mind the live show should be all about getting the crowd to be a part of the band and we all get together and have a killer time!

Do you use various tunings and guitars throughout the recording process?
No, but I am not opposed to doing so. I come from a classical mind set where you look at the music you are playing and figure out the best way to play it with the instrument you have. For example I have been playing with the Metal Allegiance project doing covers and in the past if something were tuned down, instead of bringing three or more guitars in different tunings, I would just figure it out on my seven-string.

Anything you want to add?
I want to thank everyone for the huge support of Act of Defiance and hope they like what we bring to the table. It's a mix of styles that won't please everyone, but anyone that doesn't need their music to be pigeonholed into a specific subgenre should really dig it! We are not chasing any dream of pop stardom or Grammys, we just want to play metal!

Faith No More appear on the cover of the next issue of Revolver, which will hit newsstands on March 31 and is available for purchase online right now. You can view the cover below, which was shot by Revolver Photography Director Jimmy Hubbard.

You also can read an excerpt from the issue's cover story, written by Senior Writer Dan Epstein. In this section, vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Bill Gould and keyboardist Roddy Bottum talk about the band's breakup and how they came back together.

On April 19, 1998, the members of Faith No More made a bid to regain control of their individual destinies by breaking up the band. Gould sent out a press release announcing the band's mutual decision to call it a day. "The split will now enable each member to pursue his individual project(s) unhindered," read the release.

"We broke up under pretty shitty circumstances," Bottum recalls. "We'd gone through so much together, doing what we had to do to get from Point A in the back of a crappy '66 Dodge, to a point where I don't even know how to set up my keyboard stand, because somebody sets it up for me. To get from Point A to Point B is a really long, long road. And for people, good friends, to get from that point to that point at the age that we were, it was really, really a strain on relationships. So by the time we broke up, it was kind of like we never really wanted to see each other again," he laughs. "I mean, that's where we were! It was kind of like going through war together—working together, making decisions together, doing finances together, making art together, living together — it was so much more difficult than any marriage would be, or any friendship would be. It was just really hard on us. So by the time we broke up, it was like, 'Enough!'"

Whenever any well-loved band breaks up, the question of "When are you getting back together?" inevitably becomes part of the conversation. With Faith No More, the odds of a reunion were slim, indeed; though the band's legend and influence continued to grow after its demise, FNM's four core members all seemed happily active in their post-FNM lives. Gould and Patton both started their own labels, Koolarrow Records and Ipecac Recordings, in 1999; Gould went on to produce a wide variety of bands, and collaborated on recording projects with Korn's James "Munky" Shaffer and former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, while Patton's discography (which includes several albums with his bands Fantômas and Tomahawk) seemed to expand on almost a weekly basis. Bottum continued to record and tour with Imperial Teen, and got into film scoring; Bordin continued to play with Ozzy, and also filled in for David Silvera on Korn's 1999-2000 tour. "Everybody just went in different directions," says Gould.

But in 2009, Faith No More surprised the world by announcing that they were reuniting their 'Album of the Year' lineup to play some tour dates in the United Kingdom. "We hadn't seen each other in 10 years," says Bottum. "So when we kind of came back to a group place, everyone was 10 years older, 10 years more mature; everyone was really like going out of their way in a crazy, over the top way to ask, 'Are you okay with this? I'm cool with this, are you?' We were making room for each other's creativity in a real grown-up way," he laughs. "Whereas, where we started was just such a bratty place to be, you know?"

"The Second Coming Tour," as it was dubbed, eventually took the band around the world in 2009 and 2010, though they played only a handful of dates in the United States. "When we first got back together, there wasn't actually a lot of interest from promoters in the States in bringing us out," Gould explains. "It was weird; how we're perceived in the States is so much different than in the rest of the world. We have a lot of fans in the States, but the media and the promoters primarily see us as this one-hit wonder that had a hit in 1989, or whatever."

Musically, the band was stronger than ever, thanks to the additional decade of playing under their respective belts. Fans kept their fingers crossed for a new Faith No More album, but the band publicly pooh-poohed the notion, and was reluctant to even discuss the issue amongst themselves. Finally, frustrated with performing set lists made up entirely of old Faith No More songs and various covers, Gould emailed a file of some new music that he'd been working on to the rest of the band.

"I kind of had to break that ice," he says. "Because nobody was talking about making new music. I know I brought it up, but the subject would always change. Nobody ever said no, but nobody ever said yes, either. So finally, I was like, 'I'm gonna say something—at least I'll know where we're at!'" Much to Gould's surprise, everyone responded positively to the track, which eventually became "Matador," the first new Faith No More song to appear in the band's set list in fifteen years.

"Honestly, 'Matador' felt so obvious," says Bottum. "Not in a bad way, but like a comfortable shoe. It felt like somewhere we go typically as a band. We have this language among the four of us that's sort of unique and inherent to people who sort of grow up together; we have a go-to language that we all relate to really well. So hearing it was like, 'Oh yeah, that. I get it!'"

Inspired by the positive band (and audience) reception afforded "Matador," Gould began working with Bordin and Hudson on additional demos for what would eventually become 'Sol Invictus.' "I was very shocked to hear that they'd been working on stuff," laughs Patton. "One night a couple of years ago, I was hanging out with Bill, and he was like, 'I was just working on some stuff. Do you want to hear it?' He played me some stuff, and I was like, 'This is fucking great!' He was like, 'Well, would you like to sing on it?' 'Well yeah, of course!'

"I didn't even know that it was Faith No More music, at first," Patton continues. "But then he told me, 'No, this is stuff that I wrote for us!' And I was a little taken aback… I didn't know what to say. I was flattered, put it that way. I was like, 'Damn! You wrote this shit thinking of me? Like us?' Because my head wasn't even near that space; I was somewhere else.

"Relationships are complicated—put it that way, okay? Maybe some lines of communication [between us] hadn't been exactly open. But I was beside myself, like, 'Oh my god, yeah! Of course! I know exactly what to do!'"