Jesusfreakhideout.com: Fury and Solace, "For Our Sons" Review

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Fury and Solace
For Our Sons

Street Date: January 3, 2023
Style: Post-Rock / Metal
Buy It: AmazonMP3
Buy It: iTunes

Post-rock and its many subgenres have become bloated in recent years with the success of bands like Explosions in the Sky and Caspian. This has made it especially important for new fledgling bands to either find a niche, gimmick, or specific focus to help them stand out over all the new releases put out in a year. Often, this means going beyond a technical instrumental prowess and exhibiting strong songwriting discipline. In the Christian scene, the number of good ambient acts has been limited in scope to the likes of bands such as Hammock, Old Solar, and Lower-Case Noises and that makes the debut release, For Our Sons, by Fury and Solace as important as it is.

Those familiar with the characteristics of the "post" genre will immediately recognize the slow building, reverb-filled soundscape that Fury and Solace introduce this offering with on album opener "[2:20:22]" and it's quickly apparent that you are being invited on a journey. A spoken word segment is offered on this track and poses the question, "before we were born, before we were safe and secluded in a womb, before we were held in our mothers' arms, we were somewhere else. Where were we?" It's this philosophical journey of self-discovery hinted at in the opening lines that sets the course for the remainder of the nine song, fifty-three-minute opus. Picking up at the end of the album opener with the sounds of space craft engines in take off, "Infinite" leads us on a journey both familiar and almost mystical. The images evoked in the intentionally discordant rhythms are at once as breathtaking as they are profound. This is exemplified on the next spoken word segment found in the dark and brooding "The Road," as simple, quiet guitar and wind chimes blowing in the wind set the almost dreamlike tone. A slowly recited cadence asks us about our purpose and the human relationship to God; "Humans are never content to stay still, its not in our blood. We were intended for somewhere else and we know it… I think God is really listening at three in the morning. I think He hears me better on the interstate. I speak like He's really there. I say God what I really want is, and then I forget." It's a standout track that reminds me of a quote from C.S. Lewis about progress. He said, "We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road."

I struggle at times as a listener, once I have come to grips with the fact that I love an album, to approach it objectively and search for things to improve. One could argue that for the typical listener, For Our Sons would be a giant undertaking to sit through, but the band doesn't strike out to be just a band liked by the broader audiences; they set out individually to be musicians for musicians. Album closer "Kainos Ktisis" brings a satisfying conclusion to the philosophical journey, "we are the cup which He indwells the ringing sound of golden bells. His breath brought forth the life in us Expelled to aliven our earthly dust." As the reverb and discordant synths fade into the infinite void of space, we are treated to the whistled refrain of the well-known African American spiritual, "Go Tell It on the Mountain." This provides a fitting and almost declarative challenge to take what we know of God and bring that good news to the world.

For Our Sons is an almost perfect slice of post-rock/metal. It's philosophically stimulating, while walking that ever present tightrope between aggression and ambience. Its relative long length will make it tough for the average "Becky" to be able to sit down and digest it. However, for the more experimentally inclined music listener, the ebbs and flows inside the music make you at once feel mesmerized at the grandiose scale and at peace, as the story told is one that is life-affirming. Fury and Solace are onto something both with their philosophy and their music, and I can't recommend highly enough that you take the chance on them. Especially if you are a fan of My Epic, Everything in Slow Motion or concept-driven post-rock/metal. Fury and Solace invite you to step back and appreciate the journey that we all must take philosophically during the ups and downs of life's seasons. For Our Sons bears an important message about foundational truths, hope, and grace that we should cling to through the good and the bad as we pursue the beauty and mystery that is the divine Logos - our Savior, Jesus Christ.

- Review date: 12/24/23, written by Matt Baldwin of Jesusfreakhideout.com

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Record Label: None

Album length: 9 tracks: 52 minutes, 52 seconds

Street Date: January 3, 2023

Buy It: AmazonMP3

Buy It: iTunes

[ 2.20.22 ] (2:20)
Infinite (8:15)
Constellations (8:43)
The Road (5:17)
Shadowfax (6:17)
Endswell (6:36)
Meteoric (6:00)
New Dawn (6:37)
Kainos Ktisis (2:48)

Jesus Freak Hideout (Matt Baldwin): Talk to me about post-rock. I feel like the genre, and any offshoots, often get thrown into a very specific "bucket", for example, if it's soaked in reverb and delay its definitely "post-rock". Yet if it has vocals added to it then it automatically becomes shoegaze. I personally think though that there are so many intrinsic qualities that can diversify the genres into even more nuanced genres that at times get ignored. What would you think is the specific niche inside this nuance that you're hoping to carve out as a band?

Fury and Solace: We have incorporated spoken word into our sound as a means to stand out from the crowd and bring in more of the human element through our friend Tyler Strittmatter's poetry. We love post-rock because it enables the listener to go on their own musical journey but sometimes there's nothing like the connection a human voice creates. We wanted to explore that territory.

JFH (Matt): Tell me the process on building the story that drives "For Our Sons", especially how you go about making it the cohesive story even without vocals outside of a couple spoken word moments.

Fury and Solace: It helps to have some type of guiding story within something as abstract as songs without vocals - more as way to help make creative decisions while writing and give the record a depth. We are less concerned with the audience knowing our our specific story, we want them to create their own. For me (Bevan)I had just had a son and many of my friends were also having sons, I was reflecting on how many men don't have solid guides from their earthly fathers and as a result are living lives of destruction. There's a huge correlation between men in prison and men that didn't have present fathers. In our story, the album cover shows a astronaut boy who's holding an armillary sphere, an ancient device used to navigate the stars. He's been given coordinates from his father and is about to embark on a new journey to what he knows as Kainos Ktisis….the New Earth.

JFH (Matt): For me there are often moments found on post-rock or any other ambient style of music that are almost spiritual. On "For Our Sons" that moment hit on your track "The Road". I was ironically riding down the road at 3:30 in the morning the first time I heard the track, and it has become my favorite track on the record. It just impacted me on such a deep level that its hard to explain. Was there any moment while recording that you just sat back and said "yeah that song is gonna be impactful."

Fury and Solace: Wow that's incredible to hear how it impacted you, thanks for sharing that! We get hyped when people have those type of interactions with our songs, it enables us to have heart to heart dialogue with people online or after shows and motivates us to keep creating good art to give people a glimpse of the infinite…a glimpse of Heaven to Earth.

JFH (Matt): The post-rock scene has started to become slightly bloated with the overflow of new bands as of late, what are steps you guys are taking to set yourselves apart?

Fury and Solace: Our live show has projectors on us and a screen, we want it to be immersive for folks. Also the spoken word aspects as mentioned before and in general, wanting to present with a ton of energy live. We rock out hard. haha

JFH (Matt): I know a few in the band of operated in the Christian metal and hardcore scenes in the past, would you consider yourselves still in that scene? and if you do what kind of outlook do you have going forward in the face of the many examples of deconstruction, we see in a lot of the metalcore bands that got their starts in the 2000's?

Fury and Solace: We're not directly in that scene, but we are able to play in multiple genres based on the Fury & Solace range that we have. As far as deconstruction goes, that's a loaded topic haha. We're each in different churches but all unite under Jesus and lift each other up as a community of brothers on this mission to make a musical conduit to the Creator.