The year is 2011 and the setting is St. Louis, Missouri. Musicians from many bands in the emo and math-rock scenes come together to create something new. A band that would collect influences from many different genres and time periods, putting them together to move music further into the future. This band was named “Foxing” and by early 2012 they had already put out their first EP Old Songs. 12 years later Foxing is still releasing music that feels fresh and exciting. The release of their self-titled fifth studio album Foxing only further proves that this group of four from St. Louis still has something to say.
Foxing is a wildly versatile album. It is impossible to place a label on it. Although it has notable roots in the emo and math rock genres, this album is a medley of styles and influences. Every song could be the base idea for an album of its own, and still, they all somehow make sense together.
With this release, Foxing has chosen to run full force toward the weird, and each song benefits from this choice in its own way. Dynamics and how much abruptness a song can get away with is toyed with, specifically in the opening track, “Secret History.” Echoey, dissonant vocals are placed in many tracks adding to the suffocating tone the album carries. A base layer of tranquil ambiance somehow manages to remain under each track. Even when matched with the harshness of the explosive moments that always seem to catch the listener off guard. Lyrics discuss topics like the dangers of nostalgia, self-awareness that might be put aside for personal interest and the terror and excitement that can come from new love.
Foxing’s opening track, “Secret History” begins with vocal samples playing through a rickety tape deck. Soft-spoken vocals that flow into short stints of falsetto, singing lyrics that reminisce over family. Then, suddenly as though the radio station has changed, screaming death metal vocals and fast-paced guitar chords come roaring out of hell, jostling the brain until the soft side of the song is introduced again. These few measures of chaos are as exciting as they are unsettling, leaving goosebumps behind as they fade away. The song hits full force once again and carries the last minute of the track with a mix of singular screaming emo vocals and melodic harmonies composed of multiple singers. The guitars continue to distort until the track takes on a single buzzing noise for the melody.
This first track is almost a warning of what is to come with the rest of the album. Nothing in it can be taken for granted and something new and different is always behind a near wall waiting to jump out.
The third track, “Spit” is an example of the highest points of this album. At first, it feels and sounds very different stylistically from the other tracks. The falsetto vocals and choppy high-string guitar line are intricately mixed, yet the deep and hollow sounds coming from the background allow the song to keep a certain dirtiness. And much like the other tracks, short bursts of screaming aggression come through to break up the soft coolness of the verses.
Thematically this is an album chock-full of nihilistic, or at the very least, skeptical nostalgia for childhood’s past. As well as contempt for the shift in entertainment over the 21st Century. The second track “Hell 99” gets into the specifics of this feeling. The lyrics refer to multiple cultural artifacts of the late 1990s (Carson Daily, Limp Bizkit, etc.) the track sounds like a realization that the writer hasn’t felt the same joys since childhood, growing resentment towards the shape that this future took. Reverting to an endless cycle of looking back into the past to try and find a spark of something lost.
This is an album figuratively and literally screaming for something different. While the current creative output of society might from time to time feel monotonous, every now and then a band like Foxing comes along and releases material that surprises everyone.
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