Foscor - Groans to the Guilty

Temple of Darkness Records

 

Foscor’s recent UK live debut at the Infernal Damnation festival left me salivating for the arrival of "Groans to the Guilty", their third full-length album. Passionate, assured and impressively tight onstage, it’s pleasing to discover that in the studio, too, these interesting and fathomlessly sorrowful Catalonians are honing a musical precision and a strident personality, which sucks like-minded souls into a shadowy whirlpool of despair and anguish.

There’s certainly a depressive side the Foscor that evokes that modern, delicate-but-thundering, schizophrenic flavour characterised most strongly by Shining – on "In Case the Seasons Break", with its rumbling threat, manic tone and messy snarls this is clearest – but it’s just one tint of black on the band’s murky palette. While there is undoubtedly a huge, weighty mass of sadness and screams pressing against the boundaries of Foscor’s music, the structures, momentum and sense of drama that they capture are way beyond the now-tired ‘depressive’ tag. Their claim to an interest in ‘emotional landscapes’ makes perfect sense when listening to the sprawling, doomy, rich but fraught turns of "La Vetlla", or the spiralling, memorable "Till Water Mirrors Could Not See"; there is depth and real feeling in the moods they cast.

I was surprised by a number of progressive, thoughtful, awkward moments on "Groans to the Guilty", especially during the twitching, reflective "The Amber Nest", and in the uneasy layers that weave through the otherwise churning, muscular "Raids to Punishment". Nods to Enslaved’s current intellectual leaps are subtly made; it’s quietly satisfying to unearth another band with the same challenging, diversely-influenced muse. As well as the new, however, Foscor incorporate broad strokes of the old, with outlying gusts of classic, powerful Nordic blizzards chilling what is otherwise a rather warm, if hostile, guitar tone.

In all, "Groans to the Guilty" reflects a focused and committed effort from Foscor, and the culmination of a few years working with a solid line-up and an ambitious fire in their bellies. The guitar work is, as always, a joy to explore, and the sense of an individual and immediately recognisable approach is emerging ever stronger. Long-term fans will be thrilled with this latest development, and those sampling Foscor for the first time can be sure that they’re in for a furious, engaging, tense and driving album, possessed of a canny gift for capturing the most extreme of emotions.

82/100

Ellen Simpson

 

www.myspace.com/foscor

www.foscor.com