Album of the Year is the sixth studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 3, 1997, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the first album to feature guitarist Jon Hudson, and was their last studio album before their eleven-year hiatus from 1998 to 2009. Album of the Year has been described by AllMusic as being "more straightforward musically than past releases." Three singles were released from the album: "Ashes to Ashes", "Last Cup of Sorrow", and "Stripsearch", all of which had accompanying music videos.
The album experienced success in some foreign countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Germany. It managed to top the charts in Australia and New Zealand, in addition to going Platinum in Australia. In the United States, however, it largely continued the band's declining critical and commercial response. "Last Cup of Sorrow" was the only single from the album to chart in the United States, after their previous album King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime failed to have any singles chart in the United States.
During 1997, different versions of the album were released in Australia, Europe and Japan, with these editions containing bonus B-sides and electronic remixes. In 2016, a remastered deluxe edition with most of the bonus material was released, as part of a reissue of the band's albums.
Recording Album of the Year guitarist Jon Hudson joined the band in 1996, after the departure of Dean Menta.
In a 1997 interview with SFGate, Gould reflected on the making of the album, saying, "very rarely were we all in the same city at the same time. If we were lucky, there'd be a three-week window, and then we'd practice as much as we could and record at the end of the period." Roddy Bottum similarly recalled that "everybody's schedule was hectic. And so it was a situation of making the record around people's other projects."
When compared to previous releases with Mike Patton, there was less of a break between this album and 1995's King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, which came out three years after their fourth album Angel Dust. Gould noted that a reason for this was since they cut short the tour for King for a Day...Fool for a Lifetime, instead of "[touring] it to death for a year or so until we're sick of each other." Gould said that they cut the tour short in order to focus on another album, believing that this would help give them some momentum going into it. When the band first started writing new material with Menta, most of the members were still focused on Faith No More rather than their side projects, unlike with the later writing sessions. As early demo work on Album of the Year was beginning between Mike Bordin, Bottum, Gould and Menta, Patton was busy performing with Mr. Bungle, who were in the midst of their Disco Volante run of shows. They wrote 12 songs with Menta, and eight ended up being completely discarded. Bottum stated in a June 1997 interview with Australian paper The Herald Sun that "we decided we'd just write a bunch of songs and keep the songwriting as simple as possible and just go into the studio and record as quickly as possible. That was the way we used to write stuff when we started the band, just really simple repetitive riffs without a whole lot of thought. And Mike came back from his tour with Mr. Bungle, and he only liked about half of the songs, and only felt like he could sing on about half of the songs." According to Gould, the songs they wrote with Menta were "too nice", saying "they were pop songs, but there wasn't enough feeling, enough balls." Bottum theorized that Patton didn't like the songs they wrote with Menta since "he's more inclined to not do something that's a little poppier."
Following this round of demo work and the firing of Menta, the members pursued other projects, leaving the band on the verge of splitting (because of this, Album of the Year has since been labelled as a "miracle baby").Faith No More Drops The Mask. Music Central, November 1997. Gould said after Menta's firing "the momentum just shut down and everybody went off and started doing their side stuff." Bottum went out on tour to support the debut album of his Imperial Teen side project, Bordin left to tour with Black Sabbath for six months, and Mike Patton flew to Italy to be with his wife Cristina Zuccatosta, who he had married in 1994. Gould himself spent a few months travelling Europe. While in Albania, he came up with the song "Mouth to Mouth", which was inspired by the "loud arabic music" he heard on the streets there. Gould then returned to San Francisco to focus on the album with Hudson, who entered Faith No More during this period of inactivity between the collective group."Keeping the Faith", The Herald Sun (June 1997) A reason Gould was committed to working on the album without Bordin, Bottum and Patton was since Faith No More still contractually owed a few more albums to their record company, which was part of the major label system and owned by Warner Music Group. Hudson was a former member of the Oakland band Systems Collapse, and had first met Faith No More during the touring cycle for 1989's The Real Thing. Hudson remembered in 2015 that the band seemed disjointed, since the members were focusing their energies on other projects at that time. He added, "I felt like this might be their last record, so I wanted to make sure I enjoyed it as much as I could."
After Gould and Hudson spent time working on the album together, the other three members eventually laid down some basic tracks, with Bordin having finished his touring commitments with Black Sabbath by the time this happened. However, all five of them were never in the same city as each other during this period. Gould remembered that Patton would often say he would be coming over from Italy to work on the album, but would miss deadlines. Gould further said that Patton would only give them an hour of his time when he flew over from Italy. Patton's behavior led Gould to snap out at him in the studio, with Gould angrily saying to Patton "this is it. It isn't working. I'm out. I'm done." Bottum still continued to tour with Imperial Teen even after Bordin had finished touring with Black Sabbath. Gould said Bottum briefly gravitated back towards Faith No More, but was quickly "out of the band" again and wouldn't show up to rehearsals. He also recalls that Bottum was starting to do magazine interviews where he was claiming that Imperial Teen was now his main band. Gould remembered that, "Jon and me probably worked on that record the most. But everyone wanted me to work. Puffy [Mike Bordin] would call me up and tell me things like, 'Get Patton on board. We got to do this. We got to do this.' Everybody was getting me to fight everybody else's battles."
During early 1997, all five members finally reconvened in San Francisco, with Swiss producer Roli Mosimann, who is the long-standing collaborator of industrial rock band The Young Gods, a major influence on Faith No More. Patton had written two new songs while away in Italy with his wife, including "Home Sick Home". Patton wrote these songs in just a day, and he came up not only with the lyrics, but also the drums, guitar and bass.
Mosimann encouraged the band to utilize computer-based recording/editing software Pro Tools, something they had not done before. Gould stated, "he said there were some things that he'd like to change in Pro Tools. A good example of Roli's editing was the song 'Mouth to Mouth.' It wasn't sounding right to us at all. It was almost a throwaway song. But Roli really liked that one, so he ended up taking the [acoustic] drums in the choruses and moving them to the verses in Pro Tools. It gave the song a whole new life."
Once they finished recording, the songs were sent off to Masterdisk in New York to be mastered by Howie Weinberg, and the individual members spent time preparing for the upcoming tour in support of the album. The impending Album of the Year tour would end up sidetracking a covers album Mike Patton had planned on doing with Mr. Bungle. Faith No More's upcoming album was announced to the media around the time recording was completed in 1997, and a June release date had already been finalized. The album was still untitled at that point. In later press releases from closer to the release date, the title Album of the Year was revealed, and a track listing was given out which had the eventual B-sides "Light Up & Let Go" and "The Big Kahuna" as the 13th and 14th tracks. It was being touted as a return to the band's "heavy guitar" and "funky bass" sound.
Music Style Album of the Year features elements of several genres, including heavy metal, punk, boogie rock, circus music, country, doo-wop, funk, gothic rock, hip hop, Middle Eastern music, R&B, trip-hop and soul. However, it has been considered as less diverse than their previous release King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, which explored an even wider array of genres.
The album's music displayed a more melancholic sound overall than previous releases. Gould said at the time, "it just turned out to be that way that the new material is more melodic, slower and more atmospheric. It was important for me that the album has a general mood that can be found in all songs and that it doesn't go in too many directions like we did in the past.""Fools for a lifetime?". INTRO Special edition (festival guide summer 1997). Patton commented, "It's got more feelings and balance than our previous albums. Possibly it's darker too." In a September 1997 article focusing on the making of the album with Keyboard magazine, Gould further said, "Angel Dust was like a hurricane coming — a big, ugly storm. King for a Day was like when the storm was hitting you, with all this stuff flying all over the place. And this record... this record is kind of like digging through the wreckage and pulling out bodies afterwards." Shortly before Album of the Year was released, San Francisco paper East Bay Times claimed it was "by and large, a heavy metal album", and that other styles like punk and R&B have been "sprinkled in".East Bay Times, May 30, 1997 In a July 1997 issue of CMJ, Scott Frampton described the album's overall genre as "bi-polar metal", claiming that it was similar to bands such as Mr. Bungle, Korn and Tool. He added that the boastful album title was fitting since "the band’s strange amalgam of sounds has always had a crazy audacity to it anyway." In a June 1997 issue of Hits magazine, Karen Gluber wrote that it "leans more towards avant-thrashism than the soul pop hybrid in which the group has dabbled, but their versatility is still very much on display here." In June 1997, Metal Hammers Dan Silver believed it resembled King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime more than any other Faith No More album. He said it contrasted the more linear sound they had on The Real Thing, and was a continuation of their "increasingly eclectic [output] over the years, wildly ricocheting from one genre to the next, one mood to another." "Collision", "Stripsearch", "Ashes to Ashes" and "Naked in Front of the Computer" were cited by him as example of tracks on the album which all sounded different to each other, and he added that "variety is essentially their biggest asset".