COILGUNS – Odd Love

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  COILGUNS
• Duration: 00:48:07
• Available from: 11/22/20224
• Label:

• Hummus Records

Streaming not yet available

That the Swiss Coilguns place great trust in this album can be understood from the long advance with which the first singles were released; However, what can only be understood when listening to the entire work is the stylistic gap that the group – in cahoots with Scott Evans (in the past collaborator for Sumac and Autopsy) and above all with the duo Tom Dagelty (behind the mixer for Pixies and Ghost )/Robyn Schmidt (Liam Gallagher) – wanted to impose his music.
“Odd Love” still bears the stigmata of the hysterical post-hardcore son of Converge who made them known with “Millenials” (2016), but he invents new solutions aimed not at diluting the typical impetuosity of their style, but at presenting it under different lights, if not winking, certainly less monolithic than in the past. The ideal bridge between the band's origins and its new course is represented by the melodramatic performance that singer Louis Jucker offers in the drumming “Venetian Blinds” (not surprisingly the first single, already anticipated in 2023's “Live At The Soulcrasher”). , but the album reveals itself in a surprising way piece by piece, in a “We Missed The Parade” punctuated by bronze arpeggios, a breathless race that does not give up being captivating (a sensation similar to the one aroused by the best extracts of Refused), in the insistent whistling that infests “Placeholders” until it becomes a sticky refrain, or in the beautiful refrain of “Generic Skincare”, which slowly lets itself be infected by the vulgarity of the verses.
If the main comparison for Coilguns has been, in the past, Jacob Bannon and his associates, now the band looks (for stylistic affinity) to the paths of Fucked Up, The Blood Brothers and (at least for attitude) Hűsker Du, in an always fascinating melting pot and often successful, where it is difficult to escape the post-metal eddies of “Featherweight” or a “Bandwagoning”, which runs almost out of control, with the rhythm section careful not to derail it.
Not everything works, mind you, in the new “Odd Love”, but this is the beauty of transition albums, which have the duty to stumble to test their limits; thus the ballad “The Wind To Wash The Pain” moves uneasily in its bare arrangement, carried for a walk by a voice that has not yet taken the measure of this type of pathos, while the memory of “Black Chymes” simply becomes lost , in comparison with pieces of greater caliber present in the lineup.
Despite these uncertainties, the Coilguns still show that they want to learn to move in a wider space than the one explored so far. If they can refine their aspirations with experience, then that territory may no longer have borders.