Angel Dust

On the previous album, The Real Thing, Patton had been brought in to put a voice and words on music the rest of the band had already written and recorded. That relationship changes here. The writing took up most of 1991 and was done by Billy Gould, Roddy Bottum, Mike Bordin and, for the first time, Patton. The band decided not to repeat themselves. They moved away from what had been labelled funk metal towards what they themselves called a theatrical sound. Guitarist Jim Martin did not welcome the change, and this is his last record with them. The title was keyboard player Roddy Bottum's choice; his reasoning was that a beautiful name attached to a hideous drug is a thing that ought to make people think. The sleeve places a bird on the front and a meat locker on the back, one lovely image against one gruesome one — also Bottum's idea, and Martin said in an interview at the time that neither the title nor the concept had anything to do with him. The album sold around half a million copies in the United States, short of the platinum its predecessor had reached. The running order here is the American original's as printed.