Alternative rock legends Faith No More have been on a hiatus since 2021 when the band scrapped some 75 shows due to mental health issues surrounding singer Mike Patton. Drummer Mike Bordin appeared recently on Dean Delray’s “Let There Be Talk” podcast where he shared an update on the band’s future, and things don’t look promising.
“All I can say is, and I think I do want this to be on the record, actually — because we don’t promote ourselves, we don’t talk about ourselves, and that’s, that’s really been to our detriment,” Patton said. “But we’d been rehearsing for six months for (the 2021) dates We’d been rehearsing instrumentally and we incredibly sounded phenomenal. I mean, the bass player said, ‘I’ve never heard us sound this good. This is how these songs sounded in my mind.’ And we’ve never gotten that on album, on live, whatever. I mean, we were ready, we were prepared. And it came to pass that when the gear was in the truck, when it was rolling to Chicago, 36 hours before we were supposed to be on stage, and (Mike Patton) doesn’t show for the rehearsal, the one rehearsal that we’re gonna do.”
Patton previously said that the pandemic exacerbated his mental issues, but the singer has appeared for select dates with his other band, Mr. Bungle.
The drummer continued: “And we go to go see him and see what’s going on. ‘What the hell’s going on here? Our gear’s rolling already to the gig.’ And it was very clear that he was unable at that point to physically do it. We made the decision that, ‘Look, we’ve gotta support our guy.’ It’s gonna be a sh*t storm canceling f*cking 75 shows, but none of us wants to be the guy that breaks his back and forces him to do something that he’s not in the position to be able to do. It wasn’t even an argument. The only argument was, ‘How the f*ck did we logistically do this? Because we have to.’ I mean, we did support him in our way, and whether that’s perceived or not is beyond — I can’t control it. So we pull these shows and just wait to see. Hopefully things are better, and try to find out what we can around the edges. But ultimately shows get started to get booked with another band (Mr. Bungle) and that’s continued to this day. So it’s my take, my position, my statement on it is that he’s gone from being unable to do the shows to clearly being unwilling to do shows with us. And that’s heavy. That’s a big difference. That’s a big difference. And we haven’t really had much dialogue on it.”
