Getting to the Bottum of Faith No More’s reunion

• Dustin Rabin
• Roddy Bottum (right) and Faith No More play the Masquerade Music Park on Thurs., July 30.

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Mike Patton may be the face of Faith No More for many fans. But keyboard player Roddy Bottum (alongside bassist Billy Gould and drummer Mike Bordin) has helped keep Faith alive through lineup changes, hiatuses and other setbacks that most bands wouldn’t likely overcome. After some brief reunion tours and festival performances in recent years, Faith No More officially returned this year with Sol Invictus. With the band’s North American tour stopping in Atlanta tonight, Bottum (who is also the front man for indie rock act Imperial Teen) discusses his name, Faith No More’s earliest Atlanta memories, and the secrets behind the band’s longevity.

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I’ve always thought Roddy Bottum is such a great rock ‘n’ roll name. What is the etymology of your name?

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Roswell is my first name, like the UFO town in New Mexico. That was my father’s name, but they called him Ros. His dad was also Roswell, but they called him Roddy. So, Roddy is sort of a generational family name.

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A couple hundred years ago it was Longbottum. When my ancestors came over from Scotland, they changed it to Bottum for some reason. They thought Bottum was more succinct. I mean, they could have chosen Long and saved us all a lot of grief. When I was a kid, it was a crazy name to grow up with. Every time my name was read aloud in any sort of forum, kids would howl. Now it’s a character builder and I’m fine with it. It sounds like a cartoon character. I guess the two kind of go hand in hand, cartoons and rock.

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When was Faith No More’s last show in Atlanta?

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I have no idea. I went there with Imperial Teen a couple of times, but I don’t remember the last time I was there with Faith No More. I do remember the Metroplex. We actually lived at the Metroplex for more than a week. That place was legendary. We ran out of money and a bunch of shows got canceled during our first tour and we got stuck there. They were so cool to us. The neighborhood was just gorgeous. There was some awesome soul food, a lot of rats and trains. It was beautiful. We had some good times there. That was when Chuck Mosley was our singer.

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Not many bands can survive the lineup changes and long hiatuses that Faith No More has gone through and still maintain a loyal following. To what do you attribute the band’s longevity?

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We’ve always prided ourselves on a strong sense of variety and diversity. Having established that from the get-go, it really keeps the mind occupied. We go down a lot of different avenues and it’s stimulating; nothing gets too old. We broke up for, like, 15 years. That gave us a really good perspective. We were able to take a break from each other. If we hadn’t been able to take that break, there’s no way we would’ve continued.

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Why is that?

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We had just reached a point where we really didn’t like each other much any more. It was coming out in the music. The frustration of being together was a lot of work — a lot of decisions to make at an early age and a lot of responsibility, a lot of success, a lot of failure. All of it made for a really intense time for five young people. Once we reached the pinnacle of that, it was like we had gone through hell.

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What was the spark that led to Sol Invictus?

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We had done a substantial number of shows together and we were just playing old material and it felt kind of cheesy and cheap and too easy. We’re not the type of guys that creatively like to take the easy road. It wasn’t challenging to us and probably not so interesting to our audience. We felt like we owed it to ourselves and the people that were coming to see us to push ourselves and create something a little more.

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You all had other musical endeavors during the hiatus. How much do you think that contributed to you guys being able to come back and do Faith No More again?

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The time we were apart from each other, we all went in different directions and became more who we were individually. The composite of that created what we are now. Maybe more than other bands, we deal with extremes a lot. We champion the fact that we all have different tastes and we all bring what we like into what we do. I’m a gay man and I like opera and dance music. Compared to the other guys, that’s a little bit of a stretch.

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Faith No More with Refused. $48.50 (sold out), 6 p.m. Tonight (Thurs., July 30). Masquerade Music Park, 695 North Ave. NE, 404-577-8178, www.masq.com.