Swiss noise rock band Coilguns drop their brand new single ‘Bandwagoning’. Taken from their highly anticipated fourth album “Odd Love”, the track marks a significant moment in the recording process, as it was the first to be completed during their sessions at Ocean Sound Studio in Norway and captures a rare moment of fly on the wall, effortless and raw live energy.
‘Bandwagoning’ packs in some of the fastest sections and heavyweight punches that the band have ever written, at times incorporating elements of thrash metal. With its chant-like refrains, and verses full of rapid-fire spoken-word lyrics, the track exemplifies what Coilguns does best – an unpredictable yet cohesive blend of styles, pushing boundaries while honing their unique sound.
Vocalist Louis Jucker speaks on the single “This is our noisy way of telling how little and lonely we sometimes feel in front of the big bad ones, and our determination not to surrender, to cherish our inner-freak and make it a strength.”
‘Bandwagoning’ follows previous singles ‘The Wind To Wash The Pain’ and ‘Generic Skincare’, both of which capture Coilguns defiant and feral progressive sound. All singles feature on forthcoming album “Odd Love” due 22 November via the band’s own label Humus Records. Produced by Coilguns, the album was recorded by Scott Evans (Kowloon Walled City, Thrice,Ghoul) at Ocean Sound Studios, mixed by Grammy-nominated producer Tom Dalgety (The Pixies, Ghost, Royal Blood) and mastered by Robin Schmidt (Liam Gallagher, The Gaslight Anthem). The resulting LP is refreshingly ambitious and pushes Coilguns sound to new levels – which is no mean feat for a band with over a decade to their name.
Much of forthcoming album ‘Odd Love’ was initially written by guitarist and founder Jona Nido alone at home during the first two months of the Spring 2020 COVID lockdown. Nido wrote and prepared 14 demos to show to bandmates Hess, Jucker and Galland. They worked on the songs together but intentionally let the collection fester for weeks, even months afterwards, before revisiting and breathing new life into these works for which the meanings had changed for them. “It made us go into so much detail that we’ve never had the time to go into,” Nido said. “We had decided to break all patterns. We knew that we were at the end of a certain era”.
Breaking down, and breaking out of, their usual process provided the musicians with challenges that grew into great rewards. They recorded a first version of the album at their home studio, before travelling to the legendary Norwegian studio Ocean Sound, where Arcade Fire, Cult of Luna and others have also recorded, and flew American producer Scott Evans across the ocean to free them from any technical duties and benefit from his incredible input and experience when it comes to getting the best out of a band. These three weeks were a life changing experience for both parties.
“Odd Love is a way to summarise our relationship with music in itself, the overall music business and our band life”, vocalist Louis Jucker comments, “We’re amazed how long this band has lasted so far and the importance it has taken in our life, knowing how randomly it started. Our music has always been a sane yet intense way to process all the light and deep things we were going through in our personal lives. Oddness is our normality and love is our motor to achieve it. It took us a long time to fit somewhere in a scene, since we never believed and cared so much about scenes. Our drive was to get on stage and tear it down, and we found out pretty quickly that it would be hard to turn this energy into a business plan. Through the years we tried to cherish our strangeness while adapting to this gigantic chaos that is music today. This has for instance seen us start our own label and create most of our tools from scratch. We’ve obviously learned a lot together, and this whole process has taught us to love ourselves for what we are: a noisy odd band from a tiny watchmaking city”.