Has there ever been a more brilliant “fuck you” follow-up to a significant commercial breakthrough album than Faith No More’s Angel Dust? Released three years after their Grammy-nominated platinum album The Real Thing, the band went in a decidedly less accessible and much darker/experimental direction on Angel Dust, and the results were manically fantastic. And that’s a pretty fitting way to describe this in-your-face performance of “Caffeine” live on MTV from 1992, one of the heavier tracks from that album. Patton’s abrasive intensity here is a far cry from the Kiedis-esque dude bouncing around in the classic “Epic” video a few years earlier, as he seems to relish delivering the dementedly hostile flavor of this jam with full enthusiasm. It’s a convincingly “fuck you” performance, indeed, capturing the band at the peak of their alt-metal powers. Crank it:
