Band: Cotillion
EP: Korean Fan Death
Label: None
Release date: 2 December
Sounds like: Thousands of fans turned on at once. An instrumental mind-melt.
Read for more info on the EP title. Cotillion are a two-or-three-piece band from New York via the Ukraine and really don’t take themselves too seriously – from the myth-taunting EP title, to the bizarre track names such as Saturday Morning Elevator Trouble and splintermezzo. Yeah, you’re in good hands. There’s very little plastered on the Internet about Cotillion; who seem somewhat hidden beneath the radar, a bit like France’s dance-punkers, Ultra Panda. It adds to the mystery I suppose. First thing to realise, is that Cotillion take instrumental music to weird, wonderful and murky depths of experimentation and oddball theatrics. Moments will pulsate and stab with cutting precision, before massaging your shoulders, roaring fire in your face, then hug you and finally throw you into the sun.
The swirling guitar that breaks through on opening track drummer+available slams headlong into a twisted, debauched caterwaul of scything time-changes, hacking and chopping away, like a frenzied maniac. Standing still is not in Cotillion’s vocabulary, as this speed-metal attack rages on and on. This frenzy doesn’t let up – Saturday Morning Elevator Trouble is full of wailing, Killswitch-esque squeals and shredding, alongside a marching, splatter-punk drum beat (honestly, all that’s missing is Howard Jones/Jesse Leach screaming over the top). Then, at around the 1:35 mark, it goes into this odd little breakdown, of jazz-up-beat percussion, almost-Mariachi guitar, before morphing back into the metalcore-throwdown, before spinning off into a metal-polka-ish explosion. Confused? Yep.
Different No Less starts with teeth bared, seething with rage – this is heavy, crushing, pulverising dark-rock, that instantly mellows at the 0:37 marker. It doesn’t stay all calm – Cotillion know how to build and build and soon a teetering skyscraper of tappy-math-metal sits in front of you, threatening to topple. Technical meanderings shriek from the basilisk-like Your Other Other Left, which writhes and spits with aggressive and sharp agitation. It all goes a bit djent in places, as guitars crackle and fizzle over the crunching and furious drum patterns. Think Closet Disco Queen at their most intense freak-out moments and double it. I would like to say splintermezzo lets things settle – far from it. While the spazz-core moments are jettisoned, this is a trip into the unknown. The lounge-croon of the opening minute or so, skips and stutters, evolving into this electronica, melt of humming synths, popping beats and trippy, overlapping noises. The muted piano tapping and tribal percussion adds more flavour to this progressive and superbly executed piece of glitch-ridden noise.
Final track, the cunningly titled Totally Not Semi-Improvised, grins at you for its entire 4 minutes and 21 seconds, as you try and work out if this has been slapped together off the cuff. True, there’s a hefty jam-room vibe to this, it’s scuzzy, raw, flicks metallic lick after metallic lick in the air with gargling fire as it rattles and thunders forward with prog-metal-Dillinger precision and gusto. Phew!
Korean Fan Death is released on Cotillion’s bandcamp on 2 December – for now, check out their other jams and get stoked.
Links
Cotillion
Cotillion Twitter
Cotillion Bandcamp
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Junior Vice President of Keep It Fast. In other news: I work in social media, talk about dinosaurs, run a book club and have amazing facial hair. I am also a male man who is still not dead.
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