Foals – 'Holy Fire' album review

Foals – 'Holy Fire'

• Rated as: 4/5

‘Holy Fire’ should do for Foals what ‘The Bends’ did for Radiohead: turn them from a decent indie band into alt.rock giants. The five-piece’s third LP is, in a word, huge – keeping its form through the liquid guitars and scuzzy bass of ‘Prelude’, all the way to the chain-gang funk-metal stomp of ‘Providence’. The electronics on ‘Milk & Black Spiders’ are skin-crawling, while ‘Moon’ – downbeat, plaintive and organic – could soundtrack a nature documentary. A couple of tacky ’80s-leaning synth stabs notwithstanding, ‘Holy Fire’ is an embarrassment of riches. It’s hard to see how Foals will ever top it – unless they’ve got an ‘OK Computer’ up their sleeves.