Press Play: Foxing

Few bands manage to make records both apocalyptic and relatable, but Foxing has managed with Nearer My God.  It’s dark and brooding.  The album licks it wounds then exposes its vulnerabilities moments later.

For fans of the band, this album seems to have appeared from nowhere.  Foxing is labeled as an emo band, which they still identify with, at times.  They’re still creating songs that peak with roaring emotion, but now it transcends.  They’re sonically explosive.  A particularly experimental track lingers for upwards of nine minutes.  The band borrows from different genres, bits of punk, a little electronic, R&B, but never quite staying in any one place long enough to classified as these genres.

Lyrically, there’s been a shift as well.  Their first two albums deal with things a little more intimate.  Their debut, The Albatross, is some sort of siren’s song of longing that wallows in unrequited love.  Dealer is a forlorn waltz of a past love.  Nearer My God deals with something bigger picture.  It sees the world and almost shouts, “This is all wrong. I’m afraid. You’re afraid. We’re all afraid, and that bonds us.” It distances the younger feelings they wrote about, as the band can’t imagine writing something so small to them.

Singer, Conor Murphy, unites the least-expected sources of inspiration: the Bible, the Titanic, and Dungeons & Dragons.  What unites them?  Fear.  Murphy was raised Catholic.  He explains the scary stories of childhood came from Revelations, filled with end-of-times terrors.  Watching Titanic was another fount of young nightmares.  Nearer My God is the hymn the musicians played as the ship went down, and a theme of sinking and drowning has stayed relevant in Foxing’s lyrics.  Currently, Murphy references his D&D sessions to channel the dark headspace that led to the new record.

Check out the music video for “Slapstick”.  Think baby-Groot-meets Little-Shop-of-Horrors.

For more information on the album, check out the miniseries, Nearer My Pod:

Check out more from Foxing and other bands like them by keeping tuned in to RSURadio.com!