martindavey87 What can truly be said to accurately sum up Faith No More’s 1985 debut, ‘We Care a Lot’? It’s a complete smorgasbord of styles and influences, all mashed up together in a brief 34-minute flurry of experimentation.

And yet, while it’s a little rough around the edges (okay, maybe more than a little), there’s an interesting charm about it that shows a band who, underneath all the random madness, knows what they’re doing. The low-budget production gives the album a very rough sound, at times making certain instruments indistinguishable, and sometimes the vocals can be a bit jarring, but overall, there’s a lot of potential here for what the band can achieve.

Songs like ‘We Care a Lot’ (which will be re-recorded on the bands next release), ‘The Jungle’, ‘Arabian Disco’, and the hidden gem, ‘As the Worm Turns’, are all decent tracks that, while inferior to the bands later output and somewhat hindered by vocalist Chuck Mosley’s repetitive style, show a band that are not following any particular blueprint or trend.

Blending rock, metal, funk, punk, hip-hop, synthpop, and anything else you can throw into the mix, it sounds like this should be a complete mess, but the Californian five-piece do manage to string it all together. And while the compositions are very raw and unpolished, you can already hear just in this short release that the band can, and will, improve over time and go on to release much stronger albums.

Warthur The key to grasping Faith No More debut's album is the realisation that it's approaching funk metal from an experimental post-punk direction - hence the sneering vocal style of Chuck Mosley, who whilst not the vocal gymnast Mike Patton is certainly isn't the deal-breaker some have made him out to be here. The worst you can say about Chuck's vocals here is that much of the time whilst they don't detract from the music, they don't add much either.

The opening title track got rerecorded on Introduce Yourself, and to be honest that version is superior - indeed, it's a bit of a bad choice of an opening number, since it isn't really representatives of the synthgoth-post-punk-influenced alterna-funk metal that the rest of the album deals in. At its best, the album fuses Chuck's disoriented vocals with a journey into the inner weirdness that, despite appearances, Faith No More were always hiding under the surface - Why Do You Bother? is, I reckon, a bit of a neglected classic on that front.

The album is often cited as giving rap in metal a head start, though as pieces like As the Worm Turns show Chuck's flow isn't that great when assessed from a rap point of view - but what he lacks in flexibility he makes up for with a great sense of atmosphere, pitching his vocals in a way suitable to the song at hand adeptly. Roddy Bottum's keyboards, meanwhile, play a role that's often as important as Jim Martin's lead guitar.

It's not a perfect album, mind - the production has its limitations and some of the tracks, like As the Worm Turns and the title track, are a bit underbaked - but it's much, much better than it's made out to be, especially once you get into the deep cuts.

siLLy puPPy While pre-Mike Patton era FAITH NO MORE doesn’t get a lot of attention due to the slightly inferior vocal skills and lyrical contributions of original singer Charles Mosley, it should be remembered that all the other members of the band who performed on “The Real Thing” and “Angel’s Dust” are already on board on their 1985 debut WE CARE A LOT. This band formed in San Francisco all the way back in 1979 and after shedding lame names such as Sharp Young Men and FAITH NO Man, finally settled on the more famous moniker. This debut finds the band breaking into the burgeoning funk rock scene emerging in the early 80s but with Jim Martin’s Sabbath inspired metal guitar riffs finds the band entering a much harder musical arena than contemporaries such as Red Hot Chili Peppers.

WE CARE ALOT begins with the super funky bass skills of William Gould with intermittent guitar chord grunge of Jim Martin but immediately displays a whole new element of funk rock turning into metal which includes the spooky atmospheric keyboard additions of band founder Roddy Bottum. This could properly be deemed atmospheric funk punk metal given all the elements on board on this debut. Another definitive attribute of this band from the get go is to exercise freedom of speech with vituperative criticism regarding societal issues affecting the national experience. “The Jungle” follows and displays a post-punk attitude reminding me of Pere Ubu meets new wave for a bit before blossoming into a punk sounding guitar riffage that merges the hardcore guitar with the atmospheric keys flowing together rather seamlessly.

At this stage the music sounds rather similar with the better known releases at times and this is especially true on the instrumental tracks such as “Pills For Breakfast” which sounds suspiciously in the same ball park as “Woodpecker From Mars” from “The Real Thing.” What really separates the first two albums is the contribution of Chuck Mosley on vocals as well as the lyrical content. While i don’t find this debut to be of equal value with the most famous albums of the band’s career, WE CARE A LOT does a competent job of keeping the album interesting from beginning to end. While the tracks change it up enough to keep me entertained, the one true weakness happens to be the vocals skills of Mosley who just didn’t have the multi-dimensional vocal skills to make this rhythmic music shine as FAITH NO MORE’s strength wasn’t with classically gifted instrumentalists doctoring up the songwriting, but rather the duties of the vocalist that milked the melodic potential of the rhythm section. Unfortunately despite a fairly decent debut, the band wouldn’t really take off until Mike Patton took the reigns on their third album. Still though, this album is really a fun listen and should not be ignored.

J-Man Like so many debut albums from great bands, We Care A Lot only hints at the greatness that Faith No More would soon achieve. Although the confident and adventurous attitude of the band is truly admirable at such an early stage, comparing this to a masterpiece such as Angel Dust or The Real Thing is almost unheard of. There are tons of flaws on this album in terms of composition, production, and delivery, yet something about We Care A Lot manages to be charming in a way. The weird, out-of-tune singing from Chuck Mosley along with the amateurish production and underdeveloped compositional skill can prove to be an obstacle for most, but it's still worth experiencing for most Faith No More fans. These guys started with a daring attitude from day one, and it's amazingly clear on We Care A Lot. If you want to hear how Faith No More developed such a unique sound, you need to hear this album. Every part of Faith No More is present on this debut, though in a more underdeveloped fashion. Aside from the novelty factor, these guys still had some serious issues to work out back in 1985. In almost every aspect, this album is severely flawed. The production is thin, the compositions are often tedious, and the vocals are way too trivial. This isn't an album I'd recommend to Faith No More newbies, but fans should more or less give it a shot at some point.

The music here is that unique Faith No More style, although it's close to unrecognizable at this point. The vocals from Chuck Mosley are extremely punk-laden, and give an added punk influence into Faith No More's music that immediately disappeared when Mike Patton made his entrance. There's not very much metal to be found here, aside from a handful of riffs. Most of the music is somewhere between punk rock, 80's pop, and an eclectic group of other influences that play a minor role in the sound. Despite the rather unique and adventurous sound, the "formula" is repeated far too often throughout We Care A Lot. By the end of the album it feels somewhat exhausted, but the rather short running time (under 35 minutes) helps to downgrade the problem a bit.

The musicians in Faith No More clearly knew what they were doing at this point, despite some shortcomings. The weak link in early Faith No More has always been the vocals of Chuck Mosley, and that surely applies here. Although some may like his out-of-tune and sporadic singing style, it's not something I enjoy. His vocals fall into the "acquired taste" category. The other musicians do their job well, but don't shine nearly as much as they would on future releases.

The production is a bit of an issue. It's (intentionally) very thin and airy, but comes across as quite unprofessional in my opinion. You can hear everything okay, but the instruments just don't sound great. The echoing sound of the vocals doesn't sound too great either.

We Care A Lot is a mediocre debut by Faith No More, and is probably the weakest release in their discography. I can really only recommend this to fans of the band and/or collectors, since there's really nothing above-average on the entire album. The novelty factor is pretty cool, but the album itself is barely competent. If you want to hear Faith No More with Chuck Mosley, I would recommend going to their next album, Introduce Yourself, which is slightly better on all fronts. The most I can give We Care A Lot is 2.5 stars. It's truly amazing how much better these guys got in just the course of a few years.