Interview: FOSCOR

Spanish dark metallers from Foscor have released a new album entitled as Les Irreals Visions. I had the chance to have a chat again with Fiar, vocalist and bassplayer of the band, who have talked about the new album and the cover of it, the meaning of the band name, touring plans and others.

Hello Fiar and nice talking with you again about Foscor. You have recently released a new album entitled as Les Irreals Visions, and listening to it I can say that the sound is very different than the previous Foscor albums, but I let you tell me more about it.
Hi Carlä, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for keeping your interest on us and open your site for this chat. I would like to think that definitely this album is what only Foscor can do, I mean, there’s always the wish of sounding in the most personal way, and specifically after the previous album Those Horrors Wither, which set the changing point in tools and attitude terms, I think we have pressed the right keys with the new album and it achieves to be something magical.  Look at Those Horrors Wither and how has been classified as progressive; I do think that happens because of the distance that the listener feels with what is being expressed and the amount of information that must be assimilated. A sort of test for us that was very useful. In Les Irreals Visions we needed to reconnect with the listener emotionally, and for that we have worked from that intensity and vitality that always characterized our sound back in time, now definitely breaking all style boundaries and only focused on finding our very own rules and language, far from what general Black Metal listener would expect it to be. I think we have built a very solid and fresh material, recovering without fears the intensities and densities of the past, looking for recognizable melodies for each song and minimizing the tools on the global and particular of the album. To minimize ideas and increase its concretion into the fields of timeless emotional and atmospheric music was the goal to reach. It’s true that we have been a bit more permeable to music even out of Metal during the last years than before, so perhaps to not feel any compromise allowed us unconsciously to use those audio landscapes and intentions and go at last beyond what we have done to date. Dark Rock, Post-Black, Dark Metal?? I don’t know what it is… and I think the best thing to happen is to let people make the album own in terms of emotions.

Can you say that this album is a conceptual one?
There’s always a concept covering everything we put into an album, although it could grow from different fronts and in different moments. I’m talking about ideas that finally are put into words with the lyrics but allows the listener feel a certain moment thanks to music, pictures or words. How to connect ideas with images words and even music should come by a very well driven speech, at least from the side of ideas and intentions. Once everybody knows and understands which is the goal and how we can explain it, everything becomes easier. Lyrics work as a summary of what I feel joining all elements of the puzzle together. Following the previous answer, “Les Irreals Visions” would introduce a journey, and it’s beginning is set in the foundations of the Modernisme Art period. From there, common things must acquire a new meaning, visual things, a new secret appearance, and the already known, the dignity of the unknown. This is the general landscape where we set the game here and in the most wide reading, would be the concept behind our new stage as band, from now on. In terms of lyrics, the album treats the map of collective interactions, weaknesses and individual hopes of the human being from the city as a metaphor. The city would work as magical place, and that sort of amplifier of the myth that we face. Life, represented in a maze of places, paths, wefts and bounds that make us who we are. The emotional dimension of these interactions must be read in it’s individual form, but has its translation to a Life level, as well as Nature in it’s whole as it happens with the foundations of Modernisme.

You have chosen as the lyrics to be only in Spanish or Catalan for the new , how was this decision?
Since our first album we have been using both English and Catalan in our lyrics, and not only once or twice people from outside Catalonia came to let me know that I was more credible and able to transmit deepest feelings while singing in Catalan than in English. Although they could not understand what I was claiming for, they felt it even more than in English.  It’s all about how to reach and share emotions, so, we heard those individual voices and after considering that we was in need of synthesizing our language and find what could define us the best, we bet for the tools we had closer to us, the ones that could work and represent our philosopher’s stone.
Catalan, with no doubt, allowed us to work in that way. There’s no other intention than showing who we are, how we think and how we feel… Our mother tongue allows us to speak closer to our hearts than English although most of the people whom our album will arrive won’t understand the lyrics. We are confident that in terms of feelings, to use Catalan and all clean vocals during the album will be a distinctive and way more rich tool to people ears than other languages they are used to.

Talking about the cover artwork, what does it suggest?
Regarding the whole artwork, the photography of the Dutch artist Nona Limmen matches the emotional dimension of the nature of our music and describes perfectly this dreamlike landscape of extremes in which we locate the scene and its reality. No doubt she is a key individual in this puzzle, adding a priceless value to the overall of the album proposal. I must admit that we had a couple of choices over the table amongst the entire photo session she did in Iceland for the album. Finally we chose the one gracing the cover because of the human scale it represents. Remember that we are talking about individuals and those interactions have it’s translation to a bigger scale, Nature and world. The unreal visions speak about Memory, and how it works as an extension of our experience on inhabiting the world. We cannot access to a site but perceive it. Same thing with people we treat, and sadly with ourselves. The senses help us doing this in a physical and interactive scenario, the city for most of us, but as the city hides many realities affecting us, there’s also a huge world in an emotional level that constantly affects us and we need to deal with. Something that is unreal, we don’t control, a vision affecting ourselves if we don’t know how to manage its meaning. We are constantly struggling with intuition. To feel the beauty of a space it is mandatory to inhabit it. To treat in a social world, we need to learn and reach higher levels emotionally talking.

The album is also online for streaming, what feedback have you gotten for the new album so far?
In terms of media, the feedback has been ( and continue being ) awesome. We are so glad to see how people understands the step we have taken, and even more, the results of it. To see how media appreciates our music as something different and unique speaks, once again, about dealing with personality, which is so hard to get in these days of massive offer across the music scene. Everybody seems to be in need of tagging music, and although of course we have our own path and inspirational frame from the past, to realize and achieve to just be Foscor playing our music is a priceless success after all these years. Same with people, who in general has understood the concretion strategy we have followed and the result of this very own translation into a renewed entity. I also think we must have in mind that we are a pretty unknown band for the general listener, internationally talking. The album was released about 3 months ago after a great promotional stage, but needs to grow even more within the next months. Anyway, I do think the album needs the Live stage introduction to reach the exposure level we all want. Once we demonstrate how these emotions work face to face with people is when this creative and dynamic entity so called Foscor and the magic of this album will expand its tentacles for good or bad.

What does ”Foscor” means?
“Foscor” means Darkness in Catalan. We chose this name as a concept to express how our point of view of the world and general artistic frame was working, a word in our tongue that could approach the listener to our own world. We have always been interested on explain with our music and creations how we feel the world and face it. There’s an attraction for everything morbid, decadent and sick… reflection of the changing society we all live in. The traditional beauty does not matter, we look at ugliness, death and extremes to excite the senses and capture the emotional dimension of Nature. The world must be poeticized, and self being must be united to the world and come back to life. There’s beauty in darkness, beauty in pain… because from those limit moments one can get a new reality and advance. I have always expressed how vital and luminous is this concept despite of darkness.

Do you have in plan touring? Hope to see you soon on the road!
Yes, and hopefully will be more. First, we will be touring during 8 dates as guests for Norwegian avant-garde metallers Vulture Industries through Germany, The Netherlands, France and Belgium. After that, we have a few gigs in our country including the presentation in our hometown and the Madrid is the Dark V festival. We are currently talking about further dates across the Iberian peninsula to Portugal, and something larger in France early next year. If everything goes fine, 2018 will take us to a bigger tour across Europe, but there’s a lot to speak about yet.

How do you see the activity of Foscor since the begining till present, what do you consider to be the most important thing you have achieved as a band?
It seems that after too much time, we have been able to build something with the best conditions we have ever known so far. So to see how album after album we have been able to take a step ahead, and now be signed with Season Of Mist, only confirms the always-ascendant path followed.
It was not until 2001 when we launch to the world our very first demo, and began to learn how to move a band that came out as an experiment on how translating our emotions into music, before that, we just were a couple of guys trying to approach us to the music we loved we very few resources and ideas.
It was after both entered in different bands in the period between ‘98 to ’01 that we learnt and discovered how hungry we were to live and expand the band experience beyond the rehearsal room. From the very first moment we presented our music proposal to the world until now, many things have happened. Good and bad ones… with Foscor and other bands we have took part in, but all of them have allowed us to keep learning in a personal and global sense from music, and there’s no doubt this is what makes us still consider Foscor our life’s music project. I’m pretty sure that one of the most valuable things got is how many people have we been able to add to our lives and all the things we have been able to live. This is a priceless gift which help us to keep walking and evolving. Often I remind the early days and instead of looking far, they look closer than ever regarding the enthusiasm we are facing with this new chapter.

What other plans do you have?
Instead of being only focus preparing the coming live shows period, in parallel we are working on covering the new album songs into a new musical moment. Closer to the acoustic way and even more intimate than the album itself, we are trying to get the music ready for smaller venues and formats. Electro acoustic drums and guitars, additional instruments… this is something that allows to learn once again from ourselves and find new resources and tools. The premiere of this side Foscor expression would be in December, in Barcelona in a very special gig with the friends of Gold.  The idea would be to record these songs collection and why not expect a sort of tour during the season. We are pretty busy indeed, but it’s so stimulating.

Again, it was my pleasure talking with you, cheers and see you soon!
Thank you so much Carlä, really hope to be able to meet us in person soon enough. Regards from the band to all your readers. May darkness be tragic!

https://www.facebook.com/foscor.official/