Released: 30th October 2020
Rating: ★★★★
Overcoming the loss of two-thirds of your band while battling a crippling illness is by no means an easy feat. For founding Black Foxxes member Mark Holley, his band’s third album is one that’s processing rather a lot of emotion and attempts to make sense of, well, everything.
From the get-go, their expansive fury on debut outing ‘I’m Not Well’, and its follow up ‘Reiôi’ have always had kinetic energy – surging toward something bigger – and for their third, all bets are off. Black Foxxes v2.0 are opening Pandora’s box of riffs and seeking epic vistas vaster and further reaching than ever before.
In fact, first resurfacing with the nine-minute (!!) brooder ‘Badlands’, Black Foxxes were never going to opt for the easy route. Packed full of languish-extinguishing epics, and soundscapes fit for an eighties prog-rock bands darker years, bangers there are not, but there’s more at play here for Mark and co.. Even hidden within the hip-swinging shape-shifting closer, ‘The Diving Bell’ comes the need to resurface as something bigger and grander than they were before, without letting anything dictate just what they should be doing. Mission accomplished, in that case.
Steven Loftin
