Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Co.Da
Label: Self-released
Release: 2011
Length: 18:14
Rating: 4/5
What do you write about a band that’s a near-total unknown on the Slovenian music scene, when a quick look at their musical DNA tells you this is anything but some newfangled thing with no balls and no protein? Co.Da are Slovenia’s new musical phenomenon, a spark and an alternative hope that the sleepy grunge world, busy recharging its batteries with Life Of Agony, the new Alice In Chains and the latest incarnation of Faith No More, has been impatiently waiting for quite a while. And good things come to those who wait: a polished, articulate take on the music that feeds the appetite and slaps one hell of a good patch over those badly healed old wounds.
I don’t want to generalize, but the local alt scene has rarely been so appealing that a picky ear would reach for the aces of Slovenian artists, rural or urban, because almost everything was cast from the same mold, predictable and damn stale, like that thousand-times-washed T-shirt from the back of the closet that a stubborn teenager can’t and won’t part with from their tenth birthday on. Truth be told, most of what I heard was also unserious and poorly packaged, but when the first taste of the new revelation landed in my hands in the form of the mini EP The Dawn Of The Black, it was a kick in the right direction.
The right direction shows in the fact that cliché isn’t what dictates how you listen to this stuff and soak it up. It’s something thoroughly, alchemically attractive, and when you throw in a hefty load of great guitars, great rhythms and upheavals, the promise of enjoyment only gets bigger. So what does Co.Da offer that the Sheeva conglomerate, charming as it was, never managed? Above all, punch, and a set of more effectively built songs that penetrate a couple of inches deeper into a soul well used to (and thus spoiled by) the finest outpourings of the nineties. When your yardsticks are Faith No More, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots and the big names of the flannel-shirt era, no surrogate will do.
I was expecting a saccharine flirtation in the vein of Nickelback or Creed, but what I got has a bit more going on than a set of shiny Armani outfits, brilliantine and porcelain smiles. Co.Da, or Cosmo Daivat, are perfectionists and sonic riders of garage catharsis, with style and pedantry to spare. The members of Sheeva, who used the singer’s absence to train their musical muscles and each strove to refine their own musical knowledge and vision, were joined, as a perfect complement, by the singer of the Kranj band Highway, Damjan Šaršanski, and a new universe was born. The center of gravity sits on the fat guitar axis of musical ideologue and visionary Edi Bisconne, who once tore at strings in Tito In Ekšn, and before that, with his guitar mastery of metal and the band Leb i sol, firmly established himself on Velenje’s stormy, high-quality music scene. The other pole is Matej Krč, who rounds out the fiery SOAD-style assault with gorgeous solos, and when you get the bonus of outstanding rhythms from drummer Aleš Hrastnik and bassist Uroš Dobčnik on top of that, the only way is a steep climb to the sky.
Five tracks, which after the opener Prologue line up in just eighteen minutes, are anything but boring. The first real lightning strike comes with Vulgar Fashion Of Violence, which opens with a Bregović-style phrase, a Balkan melos, and instead of a limp continuation, it’s a flight straight into the heart of a hurricane. The music has power and solidity, and the only thing holding the screaming back from matching the young guns is the rather mellifluous, not remotely angry vocal of the new vocal orator. In a way, Damjan’s voice recalls Keith Caputo of Life Of Agony, since there’s a lot of hidden sentimental melancholy under the surface. The rage that would make you gleefully smash things is missing, but the hard-hitting playing makes up for it. The two guitars marry outstandingly well (it’s tough to hold back on solos and rhythm, since guitarists are usually ego trips), and the track Gabriel shows that the band’s new throat can write convincingly, too. And after that biblical vignette of rebel angels, which is incidentally one of the strongest tracks on the EP, though by no means the only good thing about it, comes a sharp, uncompromising and tactical finish. Orkestra Influenza would no doubt sound better with raspy vocals, but it burrows into your memory, while Sovereigns conjures, with a cannonade of huge rhythms, a vision of a big stage, a spectrum of lights and an adrenaline-fueled carousel ride of pure musical pleasure.
I’m no sexist, but honestly, apart from Skunk Anansie, I can barely find a band in alternative waters where a female vocal could satisfy me with energy and heart. I’m not talking about gentle ballads and tantric sensuality, just the fact that when the distortion veers into rougher waters and the amp heats up and gets cranked past halfway, only a few women really come into their own. A male pair of gonads and throat muscles can handle it, though, and in the case of Co.Da this may well be the overture to the birth of something big, monumental and shockingly beautiful. The ice is broken with more than flying colors, and further glory will depend quite a bit on what the full-length debut The Black Disk reveals in the spring, with a release already announced for the spring months of 2012. And the countdown has already begun …
Line-up
Aleš Hrastnik – drums
Damjan Šaršanski – vocals
Edi Bisconne – guitar
Matej Krč – guitar
Uroš Dobčnik – bass
Production
Edi Bisconne
Tracklist
1. Prologue
2. Vulgar Fashion Of Violence
3. Gabriel
4. Orkestra Influenza
5. Sovereigns
