We Care a Lot

Yeah, that's right. FNM's debut is defenitely their worst album but that doesn't mean that it's bad. It still a decent album and I'm gonna give some information about this album by writing this review... So here we go!

There isn't one FNM fan that hasn't heard the hit "We Care A Lot" but this albums version of it is not the one that everyone have heard. It's a raw, somewhat slower and weaker version of it. If you compare this version with the one on "Introduce Yourself", then you'll immediately hear that the later version have been a lot more organized. I would rather count this version here as an early demo of the hit that we all know of. Track two ("The Jungle") is important 'cause it plays a big role in the FNM history. It's actually their worst song ever (at least I think so). There are a some classics like "Mark Bowen", "As The Worm Turns" and "Arabian Disco" that could have been a lot bigger than they actually are if this album just had come out more properly. There's some other tracks that can be counted more as "average" because, this is FNM's weakest and in this case it's a lot because of the tunes.

The production, well that's thing number two that makes this album the weakest in the FNM discography. If you imagine of a classic mid-80's debut album than they probably will get it right. Simply said, it sounds pretty cheap, raw and it just screams "debut album". Even if the production's pretty bad, you still hear everything in balance. That's one of the few good things with the production.

The cast are great. FNM has always been built on great musicians since the start even though Chuck Mosely wasn't near as good as the later and classic singer Mike Patton. I've heard that Mike Patton said that this album sounded like "bad hippie music", I believe that. This can (with humour) be called "bad hippie music" because everyone mix their things with each others. Roddy is probably the most shining star on this album since much of the music is like "new wave rock" or something. Roddy perfoms with a lot of new wave keyboards while the excellent Jim Martin comes up with some great heavy metal riffing. Bill Gould and Mike Bordin are great but I don't really think they're shining so much on this album except on "Why Do You Bother?". Chuck Mosely have done some nice melodies with the vocals here but after hearing Mike Patton you'll always listen to this old stuff and think like "why Chuck and not Mike?". I guess we just have to except that this was Chuck's gig and not Patton's.

So finally to my last comments...

This album doesn't shine all the way through but there's some classics like "Arabian Disco", "Mark Bowen", "As The Worm Turns" and "Why Do You Bother?". This version of "We Care A Lot" isn't near so good as the later as I mentioned before so it doesn't make the highlights of this album either.

With this said, I can only recommend every FNM fan to dig this up for the cheapest price you can find. I wouldn't recommend you to expect too much of this album either but then, that's my opinion. You must listen to this yourself and then make a decision about if it's good or bad etc.

FNM's weakest, but still a pretty cool album and defenitely worth a listen!