Chicago-based post-punk outfit and JOVM mainstays FACS‘ sixth studio album Wish Defense is slated for a February 7, 2025 release on CD, cassette, black vinyl and a limited white vinyl variant while supplies last [pre-order] through Trouble In Mind Records. 

The album marks the return of original band member Jonathan Van Herik, who replaces longtime bassist Alianna Kalaba. Van Herik’s return to the band reportedly brings renewed vigor and a marked angularity from the Chicago-based outfit’s more recent output. While the songs still hit hard, the approach is sideways; in fact, the roles have changed since Van Herik’s original tenure and previous time with Case and Leger in Disappears. Now on bass, Van Herik was originally the band’s guitarist while Case, the band’s current guitarist, played bass. The role reversal between Case and Van Herik has reportedly helped the band’s dynamic, offering a different musical perspective than before, while revisiting the trio’s long-held collaboration with some distance and time. 

Tragically, Wish Defense is the last album engineered by Steve Albini. Two days of sessions were recorded at Electrical Audio in early May, before Albini’s untimely death. Renowned engineer and friend Sanford Parker stepped in to finish the session 24 hours later, tracking the last bits of vocals and overdubs. Longtime collaborator John Congleton mixed the album’s material as Albini would have, in Electrical Audio’s A Room, off the tape, using Albini’s notes about the session. 

Thematically, the album focuses on the centuries old subject of the duality of man. Who is your “true self” and what do they want? The album sees the band taking a good long look in the mirror to face themselves. As the band’s Brian Case explains, the album’s lyrical content revolves about doppelgängers or doubles, tackling the idea of facing yourself and observing your ideas and motivations. 

Last month, I wrote about Wish Defense‘s first single, album title track “Wish Defense.” Anchored around an angular and forceful bass line from Van Herik, forceful and off-kilter rhythmic patterns from Leger and Case’s squiggling and chiming guitar lines, “Wish Defense” features what arguably is one of Case’s more melodic vocal turns in some time and a slow-burning, noisy coda.

Fittingly, the song continues the JOVM mainstays’ long-held reputation for writing material that’s psychologically probing with Case laying out the entire album’s theme in one stanza, asking the listener — and in turn, himself: Are your actions and emotions your true self? Or are they a performative aspect of that “other” person you put forward into the world? Case says that ultimately, the sentiment is ” . . . don’t let the bastards get you down, there’s something beyond this moment, like hope — but not in the naive belief that ultimately people are good.”

Wish Defense‘s second and latest single “Desire Path” features woozily swirling guitar textures, squiggling bursts of guitar for the song’s punchily delivered, mantra-like lyrics paired with a forcefully percussive rhythm section. The song evokes a claustrophobic sense of unease; of walls both psychological and real closing in on you.

The official visualizer/video echoes the album’s cover art with checkerboard patterns and eyes looking back at the viewer.