Happy 20th Birthday Angel Dust!

When it comes to albums' anniversaries, it seems these days that there's always a big brouhaha. Deluxe reissues, super-deluxe reissues, remastered, revisited, ridiculousness all around. So it's refreshing when we can commemorate an anniversary without all of the hype, and just listen to the damn thing again because it's the right thing to do.

Faith No More's fourth album Angel Dust came out twenty years ago today. Following up the unlikely platinum smash The Real Thing, Angel Dust was received poorly upon initial release, with many Epic fans recoiling in disgust at the decidedly noncommercial material that littered the album. In fact, I was one of them; it wasn't until a couple of years later that I gave the album a second chance. I'm thankful that I did; not only do I now consider it one of the greatest albums of all time, but it also instilled in me the love of diversity that's been key to my enjoyment of music ever since.

I'll have a lot more to say about Angel Dust when I start my Hall of Fame series (which has been percolating for a while now), but for now let's just sit back, relax, and listen to the record on its birthday.

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