A documentary about cult Los Angeles alt. rock band Failure is to air later this month, almost a decade on from when it was first announced.
Every Time You Lose Your Mind, directed by the band’s singer and driving force Ken Andrews, will premiere on Hulu and Disney+ on June 27.
A band ahead of their time, Failure never achieved more than cult success in the 1990s, despite scoring positive reviews from critics and numerous endorsements from their peers: their 1996 album Fantastic Planet is one of the most under-rated records of the decade. A year after its release, the band split, with its promise frustratingly unfulfilled.
"It was a good period for some bands, but not to us," Andrews told Metal Hammer in 2015, a year after the band reformed . "Our sound was confusing to a lot of people. It was confusing to records labels, it was confusing to press and it was confusing to a lot of fans."
In the documentary, some of the band's most high profile fans - Tool's Maynard James Keenan, Paranore's Hayley Williams, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and Mastodon's Troy Sanders among them - salute Andrews' band, as do producers/musicians Steve Albini, Butch Vig and fans within the worlds of film and television.
In a newly-released trailer for the documentary, Nevermind producer Vig hails Fantastic Planet as " a gret unsung classic", adding "There's a lot of records from the '90s I really don't want to ever listen to again, but that record I put on all the way through."
“Our fans have connected with the themes of depression and addiction in our music,” Andrews says in a statement announcing the film's imminent release. “The film crystallizes those connections and, ultimately, communicates hope. We’re a band that faced a specific set of challenges and somehow managed to survive and thrive. It’s a story about resilience, finding ways to cope, and not giving up."
Ahead of its streaming premiere, Every Time You Lose Your Mind will be screened at Los Angeles’ Harmony Gold Theater on June 26, with the added bonus of a an acoustic Failure set thrown in. The group will play the Louder Than Life festival and Aftershock festival in the US in September/October.
