Reviews of Small Victories

Classic Rock magazine

“Harte’s eye for detail coupled with bullseye analysis and a breezy prose style illuminates the band’s dramatic and chaotic trajectory with authoritative calm…Moreish quotes and anecdotes further sugar the ride, and ultimately steer the book into the category marked “Essential”.”

Planet Rock magazine (UK)

“Genuinely insightful, Harte’s focus on the quintet’s punk attitude and thrillingly eclectic, forward-thinking music does a great service to both.”

Record Collector

“Harte’s work probes every cranny and crevice with the zeal of a hungry aye-aye looking for grubs…Small Victories delivers the goods on musical insights and in-fights.”
“A fascinating insight into one of the greatest bands ever to capture – and perhaps fracture – the public imagination.”

Spectrum Culture

“Harte’s prose manages to describe the music as well as the delicate and challenging writing process that brought five very different egos together to create the quintessential Faith No More sound. Despite the band’s penchant for pissing off audiences (and each other), Harte recounts just how driven the band were for success and how that drive often conflicted with their need to be artistically true to themselves. Where a band like the Replacements acted out to satisfy some deep-seated need to sabotage themselves, Harte asserts Faith No More acted out to stave off boredom.”

“Small Victories is a joy to read. Faith No More has an impossibly complex history and a habit of deliberately obfuscating the truth, and Harte has managed to streamline all of it into a cohesive and compelling narrative.”

Under the Radar

“Harte’s narrative is so engaging, one does not want the band’s tale to end. For the Faith No More enthusiast, there is much to dig into here. But perhaps more tellingly and to the book’s great credit, even the Faith No More newbie will be entranced and enrapt by the tale.”

The Wire

“Adrian Harte’s extraordinarily dense biography presents a strong case for the band’s multfacetedness…A notoriously volatile group of individuals, each member is portrayed as both flawed and virtuous; in other words, human. This tells a story their well documented public snipes at one another cannot. There’s some acute analysis from Harte regarding Mike Patton.”

The Irish Times

“Harte, who runs an entertaining and valued blog on the band, has delivered a solid, well-researched and affectionate portrait.”

Wee Review

“A meticulously researched and highly readable work…Small Victories will surely prove to be the definitive book on a band who were long overdue the biographical treatment.”

Sound Renaissance

“Harte, the curator behind Faith No More 2.0, infuses a collection of interviews with band members, managers, and key figures. These first-hand testimonies are cunningly interwoven with an empirical narrative that serves as an encyclopedia for every triumph and struggle the band has faced.”

Rock N’ Roll Fables

“Small Victories answers all of your burning questions along with insight even the most faithful FNM devotee may not know. Where did Mike Bordin get the nickname “Puffy”? How does Cliff Burton fit into all of this madness? Was Courtney Love actually a one-time FNM vocalist? Did the band really reach out to Chris Cornell when Chuck Mosley was ousted?
“The most comprehensive Faith No More book you’ll ever get your hands on, hands down, and a must own for fans of the band or of the evolution of rock music.”