Cone of Shame

Album: Sol Invictus (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • A cone of shame, or Elizabethan collar, is a protective medical device worn by a dog or cat. Its purpose is to prevent the animal from licking a wound in order to allow it to heal. This song seems written from some sort of sleazy character's point of view to chilling effect.
  • The seedy, spaghetti Western–inflected song was performed for the first time during Faith No More's February 18, 2014 concert in Tokyo, Japan.
  • The revenge thriller video sees some characters having to wear a cone of shame for their bad behavior. The clip was filmed in a restaurant in the southeast European country of Macedonia.

    "This is one of those tracks that had to be a video, really, because it lends itself so much to visual imagery," bassist Billy Gould explained. "Given the song's sense of Americana, it would have been easy to shoot this in Arizona or New Mexico, but having been to Macedonia several times, there's a vibe there that I felt wouldn't be out of place as a backdrop to this song. Goce Cvetanovski, as a director, understood this immediately; he knew exactly what to do with it, and along with an amazing cast, has managed to create something very dark, and beautifully cinematic."

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