Review Summary: FACS’ Present Tense takes a lot more from their past than they’d maybe like to admit.
FACS have always trended more towards the atmospheric and experimental post-punk sound. A decision that, to me, continues to feel more and more like a mistake for them. Unlike their contemporaries, who can fall back on energetic playing and yelping to get them through the tracklist, FACS must find unique, inventive ways to hold their audience’s interest. But just because this act presents themselves differently than their peers, that doesn’t mean they don’t still fall into the same trappings that a lot of bands stumble upon at some point in their careers: stagnation.
Present Tense, the band’s 4th album, follows pretty much exactly where 2020’s Void Moments left off. If you’re at all familiar with FACS work, then this new outing won’t be much of a shock to you. The group has slowly been weaning off their noise rock tendencies with every release and Present Tense is no deviation on that front. The hypnotic drumming and guitars of “XOUT” have more in common with post-rock than anything else. Despite their best efforts to at some noisy passages across the album, for the most part, they feel more tacked on than anything. There are moments where they do pull it off with past efficiency, most notably on the industrial-laced “General Public,” but these moments are few and far between. No, like I mentioned before, Present Tense prefers more time be spent on atmospheric voyages into rusty-brown spaces. 9-minute behemoth “Alone Without” builds for quite some time in a satisfying way, only to ultimately taper off by the end in dignified indifference.
After listening and re-listening to this album a couple times over, the word ‘indifference’ perfectly summarizes my thoughts on Present Tense. Is there anything noticeably off about the album? Not really, aside from the odd, sometimes distracting stereo mixing. Similar to how it was on Void Moments, a lot of emphasis is put on the drums, even over the vocals and guitars, making me believe it’s a deliberate choice. But not all deliberate choices are good ones, and the album ends up feeling too fuzzy and disconnected to really latch onto.
On Present Tense, more so than ever before, FACS feel like they’re stuck in the mud. While the album does offer a certain degree of consistency, its lack any sort of noteworthy tracks make it difficult to recommend to anyone beyond staunch experimental rock enthusiasts, who likely have more interesting acts to follow than FACS. That may seem harsh, and it is. But I’d argue it’s also painfully true.
