As we speculated earlier, Faith No More will play the Bilbao BBK Live festival in Spain on Saturday 10 July.

The festival organisers confirmed FNM as headliners this evening, with the Manic Street Preachers and Jet as support. Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains play on the Friday with Rammstein, Slayer and Skunk Anansie on the Friday.
Ticket sales here.

Just when it appeared that Mike Patton’s solo date in Amsterdam would signal the end of the FNM reunion, the band have announced their opening two European festival dates of the summer and promised more to follow.

Indeed, should they follow the often hectic schedule of their 2009 European tour, it seems likely that Faith No More will squeeze in another date on the same weekend as their Optimus Alive and Sonisphere engagements in Portugal in Spain. The Bilbao BBK Live festival, which also features Rammstein from Sonisphere and Pearl Jam from Optimus, looks a good bet. Also on the same weekend are the mammoth and related Oxegen and T in the Park festivals in Ireland as well as the Ruisrock festival in Finland, which FNM headlined last year, and Serbia’s iconic Exit festival. Oxegen has gone somewhat hip-hop this year and the bill looks loaded but more names will be revealed on 8 March. T in the Park has already announced its headliners and is sold out so looks a remote possibility.

With as many as ten major festivals taking place across Europe on some weekends, further summer speculation would be laborious and ill-informed. However, some news to keep an eye out for next week is the announcement of the final headliner for the United Kingdom Sonisphere date. No word of an exact date yet but this week’s announcement came on Tuesday. Iron Maiden and Rammstein are already conformed for the Knebworth two-dayer on Friday 30 July and Saturday 1 August.

A confirmation for that and suddenly a whole summer of FNM again looms appealingly for European fans. What though for the US and north America in general? Three Warfield dates and the Coachella festival have been confirmed so far and there’s not even a sniff of a rumour of anything else as of yet. Some fans have taken the new European dates as a sign that there won’t be any more US shows but there is still plenty of time to fit in more dates before a European jaunt and it must be remembered that the lucrative European festival circuit was more than likely the trigger for the whole reunion in the first place so it is hardly surprising that it is being milked again.

As for a new record, again speculation is all I can offer but it does appear that the band have not even got so far as discussing the prospect in detail as of yet. Whatever the future holds, just over one year after the announcement that Faith No More would reform, the Second Coming adventure continues to enthrall.

Let us know your thoughts below.

According to the Holland Festival official website, Mike Patton will return to Europe in June for a sole date at the festival. Billed as a “full-length programme centred on Luciano Berio’s masterpiece Laborintus II, Laborintus II: Mike Patton, Luciano Berio” the performance will take place on 18 June at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ.
The website description reads: “Mike Patton is not one to shy away from experiments. The frontman of Faith No More guest stars in a programme featuring Luciano Berio’s 1965 masterpiece Laborintus II, a modern concert chamber opera based on works by Dante, TS Eliot and Ezra Pound. Ictus, the Nederlands Kamerkoor and video-collective Visual Kitchen support Patton and his musical guests. Laborintus II mixes a whole range of musical styles, from dramatic opera to ‘60’s European jazz. After the break Patton will hold an improvisation session with a host of greats from the international jazz scene. The evening is rounded off with a steaming DJ-set inspired by Italian B-movies.” Full details here. You can also order tickets from that link and full ticket details are here.
(Hat tip to Tamara Damians on Twitter)
More on Luciano Berio:
Allmusic
Daily Telegraph obituary
New York Times obituary
Laborintus II summary

Laborintus II part one

A separate Berio Patton favourite

(Via Patton Archivo) An extensive interview with Faith No More’s Mike Patton was published on Rockmidgets.com today. The piece focuses largely on video gaming with a little mention of a Mondo Cane release in May but none of FNM. Read the full interview here.

The scandal that one but Faith No More 2.0 is calling Mickeygate continues to rumble on. A new photo sent to be by the_wretched1 on Twitter suggests that a) little Mike is bigger than the previous photo suggested and b) he may not have been showing his junk after all but a dildo or prop.
After all, Patton has previous in the prop and prosthetic penis stakes. He claimed to have used a fake in 2002 when he was accused of peeing on a security guard at a Tomahawk show at London’s Astoria although now it seems that the statement was a joke.

NOT FOR MINORS OR THOSE OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION

Ladies, some gents and fan-boys, your darkest, dearest wishes have been granted. Below, via tanithskye on Twitter, is Mike Patton getting his penis out onstage at the Soundwave festival in Brisbane last weekend. Enjoy or whatever.
More details and pics at Stubbadub.

Via Gezarie and mikepatton.cl, here is an image of the official Faith No More tour poster for the group’s concert at the Festival Hall, Melbourne on 25 February designed by none other than Faith No More bass player Bill Gould.

You can see the full array of posters including the distinctly Roxy Music album cover circa 1974-style effort for Christchurch over at mikepatton.cl.

Via the always informative Inside the Rock Poster Frame blog, details of Faith No More’s tour posters for their New Zealand and Australia shows. The big news is that the poster for the Melbourne Festival show on 25 February is being designed by one Bill Gould. Unfortunately, no image of that one yet but the posters will be on sale at those shows and later on SecretSerpents.com, which still has Europe posters on sale as well.
Here’s the Auckland poster by Brian Ewing and Buff Monster.

Courtesy of a a very welcome message from Simon in the comments, I have been alerted to the existence of the superb FNM.com YouTube channel.

The channel features the essential MTV Angel Dust sessions video, an education for FNM fans of course but also for music fans in general on the studio workings of a band on the up. Enjoy Jim in his prime, Billy the musical director, Mike P on guitar, Puffy relaxing, Roddy being kept very busy and the major v minor battle in this seminal 12-part series.

Link fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

KROQ are focussing on Faith No More today as their Coachella previewing continues. Here’s their bio-style post.

Also on KROQ, the conflicting reports on Coachella day tickets continue. KROQ report here that single-day tickets will be available but there dissenting voices in the comments.