Epic…

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[3.92]

Madeleine Lee: I appreciate that some people have been waiting for this for 18 years, and I hope this is what they were waiting for. To me it sounds like these guys just thought it was cool and daring to say “motherfucker” a lot.
[4]

Anthony Easton: I didn’t grow up listening to Faith No More, though you would figure that it would be exactly my demographic. In fact, this is my first Faith No More track. I really like the whispering vocals near the end, more than the drill sergeant litany of world disasters in the beginning. The rest of it felt grinding and relentless, maybe in my withering state, I have lost all my hardcore energy. 
[4]

Megan Harrington: I don’t know about you, maybe you’re already approaching 50, maybe you’ve outlived it, but I sincerely hope for myself that when I’m Mike Patton’s age now I’ve outgrown the dizzy thrill of screaming “MUH-THER-FUCK-ER” like some kind of middle-aged rebel badass. If I don’t have too much sympathy for Patton (in fact, I have none), I do understand that it’s a confusing path to forge — advancing your art as your age advances you. But that’s the bare minimum of his job requirements, so raging like it’s ’93 is a particularly pitiful regression. 
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Yes, Mike Patton, we get it, you have Tourette’s. Pretty much everything he’s done in the interim since the last music from FNM has been more interesting than this, which doesn’t really seem to have any reason for existing. It’s dull rock “enlivened” only by its repetition of the title word. *yawn*
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: Far from vituperative, the titular salutation feels very pleasant: the catchiest part of the song. “Hello Faith No More, yes, that is to whom you are speaking, what assistance do you require?” Of course that part is unclear, to say the least. The foie gras metaphor makes a certain kind of sense, but beyond it they seem to have the wrong number. Most disappointing, though, is the unfulfilled promise of the perpetually primed drums. Perhaps that’s just a statement on being sold a lie.
[4]

Hazel Robinson: I thought for a minute this might be a Patton-ception cover of the Peeping Tom/Norah Jones Sucker but err, sadly not. If I was a teenager, there’s no way the pubescent swearing here would suck me in as much as (ironically, possibly) the tales of mid-life suburban misery that do a little bit of same thing, musically, on Angel Dust. It’s inevitable to compare this to the back catalogue it’s stacked on and it pains me slightly to say that this is, essentially, The Neighbourhood with a profanisaurus.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Sorry, no time to review, working out how to do a mash-up of this and “Uncle Fukka” from the South Park movie and reminding myself that this band used to kick serious ass.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Beloved by my peers, they haven’t troubled my imagination since the afternoon a cashier, face purple with sorrow, refused to sell me Angel Dust — the first and last time someone took a PMRC label seriously around me. Twenty-two years later it pleases me to think that “Motherfucker” might sound no different from what Angel Dust offered: symphonic grandeur with curse words tossed in.
[4]

Brad Shoup: There is a very particular type of dude — who needs to calm the fuck down — really into all the Stations of the Patton. As Whiney noted, most of ’em are here. My fav is always gonna be the tunefulness of “Epic” and “From Out of Nowhere,” but second’s gotta be Patton’s cultivated sense of timbre. He’s not afraid to dry-hump studio space. He’s also not afraid to let those backing vocals wrestle this gruff, constipated track into the realm of grandiosity. It’s all cabaret.
[8]

Micha Cavaseno: If Mike Patton had any precedents when he was unleashed as a whirling dervish of eccentric eclecticism, it’d probably be Frank Zappa. Amongst the alternative metal mutants birthed at the closing of the millennium, he was like a bunch of crass Tex Avery puns tourettically rupturing through his operatic vocal swells. And where his musical travels would proceed further and further into abstract territories (FNM begat the Zorn-thrash of Mr. Bungle, and then the dada-terror of Fantômas and the billions of side-projects beyond that), Faith No More remained a place where he struck to pop-metal traddishness. However, the boys in Faith No More are now in 2015, where their humor has gotten overripe. “Motherfucker” isn’t just kind of a generic thud compared to their perfect pomposity, it’s ruined because Mike’s devolved into a gigantic (in your best theatrical baritone) “PULL MY FIIIIINGER, DUUUUUDE.” Sometimes one should let sleeping dogs lie.
[2]

Mo Kim: The instrumental build-up is sharp — tropes of American patriotism twisted into bitter sarcasm — but the spoken word verses choke on their own self-satisfaction, and the punchline is disappointingly weak.
[4]

Josh Winters: Like if the Soft Pink Truth’s latest came bundled with a pack of Benadryl.
[4]