As early demo work on Album of the Year was beginning between Mike Bordin, Bottum, Gould and Menta, Patton was busy performing with Mr. Bungle, who were in the midst of their Disco Volante run of shows.

"[7] Following this round of demo work and the firing of Menta, the members pursued other projects, leaving the band on the verge of splitting (because of this, Album of the Year has since been labelled as a "miracle baby").

[10] Gould then returned to San Francisco to focus on the album with Hudson, who entered Faith No More during this period of inactivity between the collective group.

"[7] During early 1997, all five members reconvened in San Francisco with Swiss producer Roli Mosimann, who is the long-standing collaborator of industrial rock band The Young Gods, a major influence on Faith No More.

[11] Mosimann had first met the band in New York years prior, and he would stay at Gould's San Francisco home for over a month while working on the album.

Gould said that the two inch tape machine had to be wheeled across his backyard, noting that there was feces all over the yard, since he owned a couple of dogs at the time.

"[10] In a September 1997 article focusing on the making of the album with Keyboard magazine, Gould further said, "Angel Dust was like a hurricane coming — a big, ugly storm.

[15] "Helpless" is a slow paced rock ballad, and in a June 1997 review, Canadian publication RPM said both it and "She Loves Me Not" were songs which showcased Patton's "intense vocal skills".

[24][3] The band had previously experimented with country music on Angel Dust and King for a Day...Fool for a Lifetime, with the songs "RV" and "Take this Bottle".

Funny thing is...the image of someone sitting naked in front of a computer might not have made sense to people a few years ago, but now everybody knows what it means.

"Pristina" is a song written about the then ongoing conflicts in the Balkans (named after the capital of Kosovo),[3] with it being the final track of the band's career for nearly two decades.

"[29] In 1997, Gould also noted that "Pristina" required substantial EQ work in the studio to get all the instruments sounding clear, since "there are so many big open chords of distorted guitar, which doesn't leave much room for anything else.

The album jacket depicts the funeral of Masaryk, with the words "pravda vítězí" (truth prevails), the motto of the Czech Republic, adorning his coffin.

"[39] Album of the Year was supported by a large scale tour that covered various regions, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe and North America.

[40] Artists that Faith No More shared bills with in 1997 include the Bloodhound Gang, Coal Chamber, Creed, Days of the New, Flapjack, Foo Fighters, Godsmack, Helmet, Jimmie's Chicken Shack, Our Lady Peace, Machine Head, Megadeth, The Nixons, Rammstein, Rollins Band, Seven Mary Three, Silverchair, Sugar Ray and Veruca Salt, among others.

[42] When the album was released in mid-1997, Mike Bordin was called in to perform with Ozzy Osbourne for that year's edition of Ozzfest, which ran from May 24 to July 1.

[43] This resulted in Robin Guy (of the band Rachel Stamp) filling in on drums for Bordin during a UK Top of the Pops performance on May 30, as well as an absence of any Faith No More shows during the month of June.

Shortly after he returned from Ozzfest, the band had to cancel four July dates in Europe, so Bordin could attend the birth of his first daughter in San Francisco.

[44] The Album of the Year tour is notable for featuring Limp Bizkit, a nu metal band influenced by Faith No More, as an opener for several US dates in the fall of 1997.

[47] Limp Bizkit's guitarist Wes Borland later claimed that his band were excited about the prospect of getting to tour with Faith No More, stating "the idea of it was cool [but] once we got there, it was a really tough crowd.

[50] An intro tape was used at the beginning of shows, which contained "Also sprach Zarathustra", followed by an Elvis-style fanfare clip announcing Faith No More as being from Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.

[55] In a June 28, 1997 issue of Billboard, Kahn said that having Patton in Stewart's role was "like blending an old film with this totally weird '90s type of guy.

[65] Rolling Stone's Lorraine Ali gave the album one-and-a-half stars out of five on June 16, 1997, commenting that the band "...are floundering around desperately, groping for a sense of identity and direction in a decade that clearly finds them irrelevant".

The review states, "sure, mixing metal pomp, punk attitude and white boy funk/rap may have seemed like a fresh idea at the time, but things have (thankfully) changed.

"[60] Joshua Sindell of Phoenix New Times wrote, "the usual intense concentration placed on the work has been leached away by side projects, such as Bottum's Imperial Teen and Patton's Mr. Bungle; even Bordin has spent most of the past couple of years touring with Ozzy Osbourne's band.

[67] A less negative North American review came from MTV's Tom Phalen, he remarked that "this is a very listenable collection, and Faith No More deserves to be more than a one-hit wonder.

"[68] His review also observed "[It's] clear that the success of new head-pounding youngsters like Korn and Rage Against the Machine hasn't been lost on FNM — 'Naked In Front of the Computer' angrily rails its fists against The Man and his devices.

In his retrospective review, Greg Prato of AllMusic gave the album a rating of four stars out of five and described it as being "a fitting way for one of alt-rock's most influential and important bands to end its career.

[81] Mike Patton criticized this era of Faith No More in late 1990s and early 2000s interviews,[82][83] with comments such as "[We split] Because we were starting to make bad music.

[84] This nearly matched the total for King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime but was a significantly lower figure than that of the other two albums featuring Mike Patton on vocals.