Foals - A Knife in the Ocean

If last album ‘Holy Fire’ took them down into the oceans of a sandblasted, post-apocalyptic earth, ‘What Went Down’ is shaping up into Foals’ monstrous ascent up to the now-unoccupied heavens. Taking up a golden throne, atop a stack of hulking, world-shuddering anthems, ‘A Knife in the Ocean’ is a barely reined-in boulder, Jack Bevan’s strange, sharped elbowed beats fuelling majority the chaos. It’s an album closer so massive it threatens to unhinge itself and set off on a rampage without warning, like a rogue hot air balloon, or a petrol-drenched forest fire.

Yet, despite all of that saturated danger, and tension - ‘A Knife in the Ocean’ balances on a knife edge, after all - these are also some of Yannis Philippakis’ most hopeful lyrics to date. “Now that we’re older, the future is colder, but what is there to do?” he asks at first, and ‘Spanish Sahara’s future rust and future dust returns in a different form. This time, though, there’s an uprising, a resistance. “The fire is coming, we’ll outrun it, never be undone.” Foals, undone? On the strength of ‘A Knife in the Ocean,’ they’re not due a usurping any time soon.