So tell us how the band initially formed?
Ashley: “Alright, so, FOXCULT started in Boston, Massachusetts, as a band called Kuya. It was me and a bunch of other people, we wrote the original version of CHIPOTLE, GLACIER and HAUNTED, realised the band wasn’t going to work out so I put those songs in my back pocket and moved to Seattle. So then after like six or eight months, we decided to try again, but we weren’t super sold on anything until we found Audrey, who had replied to something completely different, but I heard her vocals and it just stuck, and we kinda just forcefully pulled her into the band.”
Audrey: “I volunteered, I heard the demo for HAUNTED and I was like oh, shit! This is like, the music that I’ve needed somebody else to write for me to sing to because when I start demos, I can’t finish a damn thing.”
Ashley: “Long story short, it’s really just been mostly formed on Twitter, and then we’ve all gotten together and done all the writing and recording and stuff.”
And how did the name FOXCULT come about?
Audrey: “It’s a complete like nonfactor pretty much, as it goes, choosing a name is the most difficult process any band will go through, because nobody can ever agree on anything. So we’re all just out in the wild doing our thing, you know, finding ideas and pitching them. I was at the liquor store, I found a craft ale called red fox, and I suggested that I’m like, oh, red fox could be a cool name. It got vetoed on its own, but we’re like, let’s just try fox names until we get to something, or whatever. So we eventually got to FOXCULT and we were like alright, that’s cool enough, this’ll do, we all agree on this enough to know that we’re not going to agree on anything else more strongly, unless we take another two weeks.”
Ashley: “Yeah, it was literally just; good enough, let’s do it!”
Audrey: “And then we were like, you know what, this does actually look really sick when you type it out in all caps, and that gives it a sense of identity so it’s FOXCULT, all caps, non-negotiable. But yeah, it basically came from a can of red ale.”
Sticking with coming up with names for things, tell us about why you named your EP ‘THE INDIGO FAULT’
Ashley: “THE INDIGO FAULT actually wasn’t even the name of the EP up until what, like two weeks, maybe even a week before we actually announced it. What was the original name?”
Audrey: “It was CHASM OF COLORS, and then we were thinking we were all in agreement on THE GLACIER CAMPAIGN but then me, I was like, no, that’s dumb, but then we got to THE INDIGO FAULT and it took forever for me to come around on it, because I got super pedantic about just certain meanings of certain words.”
Ashley: “And you’ll notice, if you if you ever looked at our Twitter, as we’re posting teasers of the artwork, the artwork kind of changed from this deep saturated black to slowly but surely getting more and more purple in the background. And that’s why.”
Audrey: “So it’s kind of a double entendre in terms of the meaning of the title itself, which firstly is just kind of a general metaphor for space in and of itself, and then it also refers to the original title, which was CHASM OF COLORS, which comes from the verse of GLACIER; (Audrey sings the line) “I followed that echo down, a chasm of colours” which basically is the idea of like, being on the glaciers of Neptune, finding where you need to go, and you find it because there’s basically Northern Lights blasting out of the ground. That’s how I like to write my lyrics, I’ll build a setting, a tangible space in which to set the perspective of the song and then I’ll use that to inform the imagery and the metaphors that I want to use, so it’s also referring quite literally to being a fault line spewing with all these colours, and the purply, indigo waters of Neptune below. I hated it at first, it took us like an entire day of bickering back and forth.”
Ashley: “It was bad, it was really bad.”
Audrey: “The two final contenders were THE INDIGO FAULT, or THE INDIGO FRACTURE. I wanted fracture, because using faults, another meaning to that could imply that some kind of mistake was made, which is antithetical to what the story is. But then everyone else was like, you’re overthinking this, and eventually, I’m just like, alright, you can have this one, so we went with THE INDIGO FAULT.”
Ashley: “I will say, I do still really like THE GLACIER CAMPAIGN, I think it’s a sick name.”
Can you talk us through the sci-fi elements and lore of the EP, we know from our track by track feature with you what each individual song represents, but can you paint us the big picture?
Audrey: “It’s very much a point A to point B, linear narrative, in this case about getting from Jupiter to Neptune, but each song doesn’t necessarily talk about like, oh, this is what’s happening now, it’s more of an analysis of certain moods and mindsets as as the character progresses. So, EMPTY SPACE deals with having to make a choice, CLIFFJUMPER has to deal with having made that choice and now realising that there’s going to be some sort of consequences to this and determining whether or not like it was the right thing. SILICONE DREAM is basically the regret side of it and being like ah shit, this was all a mistake, and GLACIER is the resolution to that. And then SYMETTRY is very much the reset point of like, okay, we got to where we’re going, now what?”
So you’ve mentioned to us that there’s a couple of new songs in the pipeline, can you tell us much about those yet?
Ashley: “I’m talking about it, I’ll talk about it all day, I don’t care, I’m really excited. So, initially we were thinking about just following it up right away with another EP, but we talked about it and we realised that using two songs to kind of bridge that gap of going back, we already have an idea of what our next, either EP or LP will be in terms of like aesthetics. And now it’s just getting us back to that point so that we can do that.”
Audrey: “So the next two songs continue that journey, going back towards Earth.”
Ashley: “So narratively, obviously we kind of already touched on what each one will be about, the journey back to Earth and then actually arriving back there, and then the next thing, be that an EP or and LP, you gotta wait to hear more about that.”
Audrey: “We haven’t fully decided yet, so we don’t even know ourselves what we’re going to be doing for the next full release, but we do know that narratively, it basically is the follow up to that reset point and the whole idea of after going on this whole long, crazy journey, finding out who you really are now you have to you find yourself back on Earth in this worldly space, with the same constraints and expectations that were there when you left, except now you’re this new person and you have to re-adjust to just being in that setting. So that’s where it’s going narratively, but we don’t know how we’re going to deliver it yet.”
So when it comes to writing the music, what artists and influences would you say you take inspiration from?
Ashley: “So, for me, I would say the two biggest things, which should be a shocking surprise to absolutely nobody that ever listens to anything I’ve ever written, is Circa Survive and Saosin. I think that they have four of the most talented guitar players when it comes to like writing and their overall soundscapes and stuff like that, they’re just phenomenal. I like the emotion that they get out of their music, I feel like they’re two of the few bands that the music tells its own story where if you took away Cove Reber, and you took away Anthony Green from both of those bands, their music will play its own story, with another story on top because of the lyrics and vocals.”
Audrey: “Billy Talent, Deftones and Chevelle, those are the three that are very locked in where those influences are all very apparent. For me, I think I’m probably the most punk-centric background, stuff like Hundredth, Defeater, Rise Against, but I am also into a lot of metalcore and more hardcore stuff too. So that’s where a lot of the vocal inspiration comes from, very heavily influenced by Chevelle in particular. Pete Loeffler’s like my favourite singer. And then, again, with Deftones and Chevelle, that’s where the sense of atmosphere and things not always being super fast or intense comes from. So much of it is about the soundscape and the creation of these worldly images just with the instrumentation and the use of texture. Devin Townsend is another big one, so that’s where I’m coming from, a mixture of all that.”
What kind of things can we expect once FOXCULT are out doing live shows?
Ashley: “So we’ve taken a really long time to meticulously curate how we appear online, for the most part what we say is very specific and curated, like our EP teasers and such, although we still have our goofy funny moments. And we plan to have that level of integration in our live set, we want our live show to be an experience where the audience feel like they’re being brought along for a ride, as if you’re watching a documentary.”
Audrey: “It’s all still very based around telling the narrative, like I might crack a few jokes here and there depending on how I’m feeling but otherwise it’s very theatrical and less focused on crowd interaction. It’s a bit less traditional than your standard concert, in favour of it being this whole big thing.”
Ashley: “So like, have you ever seen Sleep Token? Similar to that, but with less secrecy because people know who we are. But in the sense that we don’t interact with the crowd so much, the crowd is a part of this journey with us, and the AI that Haven has crafted is the one taking us through this journey together.”
Audrey: “To clarify the whole AI thing, that is the voice that is speaking to us in the teasers, sort of like a companion character to the protagonist, whose perspective is being told in the songs. So that’s where a lot of the wider exposition is coming from.”
What can we expect from FOXCULT in 2024?
Ashley: “We have a few things under wraps at the moment that we’re working on, I can say that they involve us playing in multiple states, with bands that are bigger than us, and as we get more music out we plan on just touring a lot, as much as we can, we just wanna make sure that we do it right and make our shows impactful. Lofty goal, but our goal for the end of the year is to be in a position where we’re touring full time.”
Audrey: “We’ll be writing and recording too, but as far as timelines for that, who knows.”
We conclude our chat talking about all the different merch ideas the band could come up, including figurines of all the members, as well as a spaceship design for the character from the band’s narrative. 2024 is shaping up to be a huge year for FOXCULT, and we at Noizze believe they are a rare and exceptional, young but skilled group of creative musicians, ready to take on the world.