Throwing a cover version on your major label debut studio album is, if not rare, at least a little bit gutsy, undoubtedly. It’s a gesture that says: “Here we are… we’ve arrived and we deserve to be considered amongst the historic in music.” It’s an endeavor that’s, at least in my noxious opinion, pretty hazardous, and often precipitative of regrettable results.
Another pitfall lots of artists face is that when they handle a song, the results are too similar to the original version, to the point where there’s really no purpose to replicating the original at all. Ironically, Faith No More’s masterful take on “War Pigs” is indeed almost a carbon copy of the original. In fact, it even sounds like lead guitarist James Martin actually uses the exact same instrument that Tony Iommi does in the Black Sabbath version. The way he gets away with this close similarity is just with undeniable richness and depth of sound. In the background, the drums pound out a pretty similar timbre to the classic rock canon of yore, with perhaps a bit more grandiosity and resonation, but Martin’s axe sound is gargantuan and undeniable, almost seeming to make a cataclysmic political statement with its noise alone.
Another example of a band choosing to play another group’s song and rendering the results pretty close to the original, but actually making it work, would be The Black Crowes’ killer run-through of The Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Rambler.” Maybe it’s something about the classic rock format, in the end, that allows for energy and genuineness through exact mimicry. In both cases, anyway, The Black Crowes’ expedition and Faith No More’s the production on hand is absolutely superb, which would seem to be a requirement of maneuvering a cover version that’s something like a clone of the original.
Ultimately, too, Mike Patton’s assertive, boisterous vocals help the track reach its nirvana-like heights that it does. I think everyone would agree that he naturally has a considerable penchant for the dramatic and perhaps even the theatrical, one thing that for a long time turned me off about Faith No More in my punk/indie/apathy/irony days. And it’s not to say that those days are completely over but I made a grave mistake in discarding Faith No More as mainstream detritus because they approached songwriting with a wild sense of creativity, an infectious spirit and fervent muse that even shines through when they’re copying somebody else.
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