Foals - What Went Down (10th Anniversary) [Olive Green & Black Marble]

What Went Down turns ten this year, Foals at their loudest and heaviest, now pressed in olive green and black marble.

By 2015 Foals had already spent two albums refining a nervy, mathematically precise take on post-punk, all interlocking guitar lines and controlled tension. This one broke that control on purpose. Yannis Philippakis called it their heaviest record, and the band leaned into something closer to full aggression without abandoning the intricacy that made them interesting in the first place, a genuinely difficult balance that mostly holds. It became their highest charting album in America and landed at number three at home, proof the heavier turn cost them nothing.

The title track opens the record at a full sprint, a riff built to be screamed back in a festival field. Mountain at My Gates is the closest thing here to a pop song, all soaring chorus over guitars that still bite. A Knife in the Ocean slows the tempo into the album's most atmospheric stretch, and Give It All closes things with the kind of widescreen build Foals had been working toward across three albums, finally landing exactly where it needed to.

Ten years on, still their most physical record. The new colourway suits the mood.