Foals began when the math rock staple The Edmund Fitzgerald broke up. Jack Bevan, Lina Simon, and Yannis Philippakis felt as if making tech music was too serious and was not fun enough for them. For those unfamiliar, math rock is prog-influenced experimental guitar music often polyrhythmic and set in odd time signatures. Like if an indie rock band was actually trying really hard at playing their instruments. These lads instead began making dance-rock that was easier for people to bop along to and before you know it: Cassius is over, Cassius away.
2012 sees Foals get heavy in a different way. Equally suspenseful and grooving, “Inhaler” sounds too angsty for a band aimed at just having fun. Yannis Philippakis shouts fiery commands in a tone more deep and raw then anything heard on Antidotes or Total Life Forever. Philippakis demands you “throw your fortunes away” in a voice reminiscent of primitive 1980s punk, and the word space echoes enormously as the band breaks into funky noise chaos that sounds like something Rage Against the Machine would have done 15 years ago. Does the world really need more aggressive alternative rock? With this song, I am finding it hard to tell the difference between a late ’80s/early ’90s noise influence or just de-evolution into where mainstream rock music was ten years ago (a really, really bad place.)
I consider 2008’s Antidotes a rush of kinetic energy, with instrumentation simple yet always moving about and interesting. 2012’s single “Inhaler” certainly upbeat as well, but at times I get the same feeling sensed when listening to Rise Against or 30 Seconds to Mars, not nearly as enjoyable. As wrong as it is to compare the two, The Edmund Fitzgerald was heavy through ambitious experimental instrumentation and Foals of 2012 seems to have channeled that energy immaturely (resulting in msucial pointless aggression.) I am very eager to hear the rest of Foals’ new album Holy Fire when it comes out this February.