FACS: Wish Defense – Album Review

FACS: Wish Defense

(Trouble In Mind Records)

DL | LP | CD

Released on 7th February 2025

In what marks Steve Albini’s final recorded work, FACS return with a dangerous yet hypnotically seductive journey into self-reflection, taking their meditation on modern existence and individuality to new
depths.

The question is loud and clear: Who am I?

In Wish Defense, the sixth studio album by Chicago post-punk trio FACS, the theme of duality resonates almost like an elegiac prayer — a plea not to surrender to the version of yourself that you’ve created to fit into society. A virtual doppelgänger, bursting with plastic promises of a future only viable through repression and subtle detachment — from ourselves and from others — as if being true to the self might somehow pose a threat.

Quite a few lines — recited with solemn mastery by vocalist and guitarist Brian Case (Disappear, The Ponys, 90 Day Men) — drive this message home in a poetically charged way:

“The safety of custom / Woven bones / Enter the mirror / Abject self / Sold the past / I’m not here / Are you the same as you were? / Are you real?”

Rage is present, but not predominant. The compositions drip with longing for rebirth and a veil of bitter nostalgia, especially in tracks like Ordinary Voices, Desire Path, and Your Future. There’s no indulgent wallowing here, yet the record often invites pause and reflection, as it progresses in a back-and-forth of contrasting emotions, with elegantly crafted minimalism reminiscent of bands like Slint and Shellac themselves.

Shortly after Albini’s untimely passing, the album was mixed by longtime collaborator John Congleton at Chicago’s Electrical Audio studio, who ensured the preservation of its uncompromising sonic rawness — without which the layering of the work wouldn’t resonate so organically.

The emotional balance is remarkable, and while some of the tracks might have benefited from deeper development, Wish Defense offers an excellent blend of tension as well as brief moments of relief — allowing breath without disrupting the album’s cohesive flow.

The overdriven guitar arpeggios maintain the trademark eeriness of FACS’s earliest endeavors — Still Life in Decay, Lifelike — and often morph into crushing, shoegazey waves that echo like ghostly laments. These moments bring an odd sense of relief, a fragile beauty in contrast with the bitterness of Case’s sparse vocals. The bass lines from Jonathan van Herik — formerly the band’s guitarist, who rejoined the project in 2022, years after his departure — are sharp and deliberate, contributing significantly to the record’s fractured tension. The rhythm section as a whole finds a standout moment midway through the album, particularly on the fourth track, A Room, where Noah Leger’s drumming carries the piece from start to finish with understated force.

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The closing track, Your Future, is a high peak — merciless, enigmatic, frantic. It plays like a message from your future self: a plea to accept who you’ve become and embrace the dread of change — which, of course, won’t come without regrets. The song works as a perfect closure, spiraling from an unsettling loop of arpeggios and gradually unfolding into pure noise. Perhaps the lineup changes and role-swapping FACS underwent over the years brought a quiet freshness on board, without compromising their compositional consistency and stylistic integrity, which remain solid in 2025.

Wish Defense stands as one of FACS’s strongest efforts: a visceral portrayal of inner turmoil and identity loss. It offers no answers — only the right questions to ask yourself. It’s an invitation to reclaim control, as you face your own dark reflection, whether it flickers out of a screen or stares back from a mirror —once again.

FACS are on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, and X

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All words by Giovanni Trovato – this is Giovanni’s first review for Louder Than War

• Source: NEWHD MEDIA