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Always seeking proposals that challenge and ignite the senses whilst forging new invasive temptation, Swiss quartet, Coilguns, has always been a rewarding refuge and evolving adventure come trespass of noise and imagination. Unpredictability and creative intensity has as much shaped and fuelled their tracks, EPs and albums as physical intimation and intimidation and new album, Watchwinders is no exception; in fact it is the band’s most compelling, ravenous, and rousing slab of incitement yet.
With both debut album Commuters and its successor of last year, Millennials, we have come away wondering and in regard to the latter maybe doubting whether Coilguns could emulate let alone eclipse their feral majesty. We will not be allow that fruitless thought to arise with Watchwinders despite its magnificence but simply bask in its irresistible provocation and intrusive craft.
Released as all the band’s encounters via Hummus Records, the label founded by guitarist Jona Nido, Watchwinders was written and recorded during one intense month-long session, and as always with the band recorded live, and there is no escaping the instinctiveness of its breath and assault. There are moments when it is as if the band itself does not know what is coming next yet each song is a skilfully woven tapestry of sound, texture, and dissonance as fluid and earnest as it is unscrupulous verging on psychotic.
The album immediately lured unbridled attention with opener Shortcuts. For a minute and a half, Luc Hess manipulates with his galvanic senses poking beats, the vociferously presented tones of vocalist Louis Jucker just as potent in enslaving ears and appetite. In swift time the swipe of noise punk proved enslaving and only enforced its hold and drama before Subculture encryptors forced its thick and also quickly gripping body through speakers. As rhythms fall over themselves to invade, the guitars of Nido and Jucker create a sonic scourge; one only further bracing once embracing the great raw pestering of the latter’s vocals. From the abrasive flurry a just as devious calm emerges, rhythms and sonic threads a virulent nagging matched in prowess and magnetism by the vocals with the synth of Donatien Théivent carrying the same composed yet volatile enterprise, as the track revolves in rapacious noise and intent.
Big writer’s block erupts with its own contagious spite and captivation next, rhythms again at the core of its bold and vigorous creative coercion where punk and hardcore essences entangle in noise and sonic voracity. A breath taking cauldron of untamed and tense captivation it is followed by the album’s title track which eagerly uncages an esurient flood of urgency and compulsive tempestuousness in sound and emotion. The track is superb, managing to eclipse its mighty predecessors even by the brief time it takes its cyclone to slip into a bewitching oasis of magnetic voice and synth. Even so a current of rhythmic badgering escapes the agility of Hess, niggling and inviting as Jucker’s throat provides a similarly rich coaxing.
The prowling doomy presence of The Growing block view follows, the track skirting and courting the senses with its dark, heavy and evocative bait before Manicheans shares it’s twisting and turning, threat carrying drama. It is another drenched in discord bred thought and sound, a track fraught and agitated physically and emotionally with both songs effortlessly adding to the persuasive weight of the release.
Prioress is next up, an encounter haunting and staining the senses with its respective calm intimacy and drama bred turbulence. Locked away in its gripping, slightly suffocating dark defiled rapture, ears and appetite again found themselves defenceless to the band’s invention with eventual escape from the song’s creative confinement only the doorway into insatiable carnal tenacity courtesy of The Morning shower. A rapacious noise punk trespass as psychically catchy as it is emotionally disharmonious it joined its companions in easily luring us to stomp to its tune.
The unpolished, blemish embracing reflection of A Mirror bias beguiled with its singular but potent tenebrous breath with Urban reserves straight after unleashing a hardcore winded cyclone animated tempest to equally enthral and incite. With the keys of Théivent alone a portrait of fateful and predictive suggestion within the track’s tumultuous and unstable expulsion, the second of the two is the kind of infernal uproar that makes Coilguns and indeed Watchwinders so unique and addictive.
The album closes out with firstly the devouring hounding of Broken records and lastly the hypnotic seduction of Periscope. The first simply engulfs and consumes all in its path without suffocating its organic infectiousness while its successor arises upon a sonic line to draw and open up every predatory shadow and caliginous depth of false utopia and together they provide a fearsomely glorious conclusion to an outstandingly impressive release.
Once more Coilguns has left us open mouthed and lustfully devouring an album which leaves the world a better if more soiled place.
Watchwinders is out now via Hummus Records on CD and vinyl; available as a name your price download @ https://coilguns.bandcamp.com/
Full Coilguns tour dates w/ Yautja
08.11 – Paris (F) @ Espace b
09.11 – Sheffield (UK) @ Record Junkee
10.11 – Leeds (UK) @ Temple of Boom
11.11 – London (UK) @ The Macbeth Of Hoxton
12.11 – Glasgow (UK) @ Broadcast
13.11 – Manchester (UK) @ Satan’s Hollow
14.11 – Northampton (UK) @ TBA
15.11 – Utrecht (NL) @ TBA
17.11 – Gdansk (PL) @ Ziemia
18.11 – Warsaw (PL) @ Poglos
19.11 – Krakow (PL) @ Warsztat
20.11 – Wroclaw (PL) @ DK Luksus
21.11 – Berlin (D) @ Zukunft am Ostkreuz
22.11 – Stuttgart (D) @ Ju-Ha West
23.11 – Fribourg (CH) @ Hummus Fest / Fri-Son
24.11 – Lyon (F) @ La Marquise
26.11 – Clermont-Ferrand (F) @ Raymond Bar
27.11 – Angers (F) @ Jokers Pub
28.11 – Oss (NL) @ Lollipop
29.11 – Fontaine l’Evêque (B) @ MCP Apache
30.11 – Liège (B) @ La Zone
https://www.facebook.com/coilguns https://twitter.com/COILGUNS
Pete RingMaster 04/11/2019
Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright
The increasingly magnetic and impressive start is easily continued by the album’s title track. It too springs from a seductive sonic lure if one which lances the senses rather than caresses them. The emerging web of guitars ensnared ears with swiftly nagging and devious intent; a strength of coercion matched in voice and rhythm. There is a touch of Mudvayne to the track at times which does it no harm or indeed the atmospheric winds which bring haunting melodies amid seemingly calm but dark aural intimation.
EP opener, Only Shades, comes into view on cold winds, a portentous pulsation accompanying its emergence before guitars entangle the growing intimation. It all veers into a groove driven stalking of the senses, a powerful and sinister stroll loaded with restrained but invasive rhythms and potent throat raw vocals. Those grooves continue to lure keen attention within the similarly inviting if threatening consumption of sound where melodic enterprise and tempestuous intimation only adds to the track’s imposingly stirring presence, the EP off to a highly persuasive and stirring start.
Inspired by a fan at their first show after returning, Let It Go is an infectious stroll with a web of hooks which just relentlessly hit the spot. Bass and drums create a tasty nagging as persistent as it is mercurial in its attack whilst guitar and vocals colour the heart of the emotion bred encounter. Embracing a weave of rock bred flavours the song makes it easy for ears and personal thoughts to be involved with its presence before the melancholic but uplifting Sorrows fully grabbed attention and fresh plaudits.
The following Hysteria surges through ears with punk ‘n’ roll rancor, beats thumping with flirtatious violence as group shouts and urges accompany individual temptation. It is a seriously enjoyable and insatiable trespass emulated in its own way by successor Golden Rats but given a whole new web of twists and turns to become scorched by and addicted too. Both tracks reveal more of the bolder hunger and adventure in the band’s sound; exploration further stretched and exploited within the invasively mercurial Death Cab. As its punk heart bellows and ensnares like a malicious Shevils, the band’s rock ‘n’ roll instincts gains momentum, the great blend of vocals following the imaginative endeavour. Wiry grooves and the brooding growl of the bass only add to the unbridled magnetism brewed and devoured.
The excellent start is matched by the caustic stomp of Find A Way, its intensive assault a furious charge compared to the swagger of the previous protagonist but veined with melodic tendrils and scythes and twisting spirals of noise. For all the rage, already an inbred infectiousness is as powerfully commandeering reactions, Insanity entangling both with imagination and zeal. It is a quality as rich within the album’s title track and indeed What I See after that. The first of the pair points and challenges with every syllable and note, band cries and neck muscle testing catchiness a particular trespassing incitement within nothing but while the second flows from its predecessor upon another deliciously grouchy bassline into a web of seriously grooved and rapacious punk rock with the instincts to rock ‘n’ roll.
It is hard to say that Life’s December is yet offering anything boldly new in sound but from this song alone there is plenty of fresh resourcefulness to get the teeth and appetite seriously into; a potent and dynamic persuasion which continues with Memories and World Of Blame. The first gets right under the skin in no time with its steely grooves and grouchy riffs. Once in control it then uncages a rapacious torrent of melodic intrusions and rhythmic rancor which in turn is soon involved in a net of more welcoming and emotively lively exploits. Across the song, the band seamlessly slips into mellower or more cancerous endeavours, contrasts and extremes skilfully woven together to create one of the more dramatically unique and memorable passages within the album. In comparison, its successor is a carnal tempest of noise and spite; a fall into sonic causticity and vocal ire which without matching up to its predecessors still has ears fully engaged especially as it expands its stark and increasingly cancerous landscape of sound and emotion.