“There’s so much that needs to be confronted right now”: How Fox Lake are turning up the heat

Fox Lake’s veins are full of fire, and they want to give it to you too. In fact, they may have done so already. If you headed down early on Poppy’s recent UK tour you might have caught the Denver trio putting her fans through a thorough warm-up, with an arsenal of explosives tunes fusing the muscular swagger of nu-metal with the bravado of rap and the jaggedness of hardcore.

They thrive off the energetic exchange between them and the crowd, even those who are new to their game. After all, it’s what brought them to heavy music in the first place. “You go to a hardcore show or a nu-metal show, whatever it is, and there’s nothing like it,” notes guitarist Brandon Kemp, who’s dropping in alongside bassist Zach Swafford from the back rooms of Zurich’s Komplex 457. “The whole crowd is a part of the show, and I think that’s what makes it so special.”

Formed in 2017, the trio – completed by vocalist Nathan Johnson – served the world a knuckle sandwich by means of introduction on 2020 debut Silence & Violence, but it was on last year’s follow-up New World Heat that they jumped up to the next level. That transmission of energy that matters so much is taking place on an even bigger scale now, but crucially, they want to see you use that fire for something.

New World Heat’s thundering thesis is to always, always choose action over passivity. “There were a lot of people around us who we saw getting into the victim mentality and falling into bad habits, myself included,” explains Zach. “It’s very easy to get into comfortable habits that can actually be really self-destructive over a long enough period of time – especially things like doomscrolling. They seem so innocuous at the time, but it’s really, really detrimental. It’s about really challenging yourself and asking, ‘What stuff benefits me, and what am I doing on purpose versus what am I allowing the world to determine for me?’”

And there’s a bigger, more urgent component to this message. Fox Lake have no trouble with a political meaning being drawn from their music. In fact, they never want to leave their stance ambiguous – it’s free Palestine and fuck Trump, as they declare onstage every night – even if it’s not their defining quality. They want to catalyse meaningful change, not merely liking, sharing or to quote Zach’s example, posting squares for Black Lives Matter. In short: they want to see you out on the streets.

“Especially in America right now, there’s so much that needs to be handled and so much that needs to be confronted, and so much that needs to be taken control of – as corny as it sounds, taking the power back and putting it back in the hands of the people,” asserts Zach.

“A lot of people are feeling really powerless and neutered by the system in a way that prevents them from doing anything, or feels like they’re prevented from doing anything. If you want to see something be different, then you have to act differently, and you have to encourage other people to act differently.”

Fox Lake are on tour around Europe with Poppy right now.

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