Judging from their smart website content, Cotheria, from Leeds, are a young band with a penchant for blending genres; a band not adverse to the odd artistic flourish, and a band with high hopes of scoring mainstream success. Up to this point, they've made a couple of demos and scored a number of successful shows, supporting bands like Johnny Truant, Fightstar and Skindred. The band recently headed into Silent City Studios, in their hometown, to record this EP with a view to getting a debut album together for early 2011.
The production quality is desperately short of what is needed for each component to really shine. Dave Eriya's clambering vocal on 'I Know I'm Wrong' is breaking and scattergun (it threatens to disintegrate completely on the cringingly pained chorus), whilst the drums pitch between too much snare smack and cymbal hiss. The hearty guitars come out relatively unscathed with a good degree of furious overdrive ladled on and have been tweaked nicely to just collect the feedback. The fact this particular track is up front is a big mistake as things do improve once the hardcore elements kick in, but it doesn't stop the fact that the whole thing is screaming out for a bloody good shot of bass to be run through it.
The songs themselves are challengingly composed; stop-start structures that switch tack from clean vocals to a demonised, unhinged screaming. They are pitched somewhere between the progressive hardcore strata that bands like Architects or Protest The Hero are growing fat on, the rock plundering of Fightstar and Funeral For A Friend, and the full-bore destruction that Bring Me The Horizon and Suicide Silence are selling. In all this, 'The Engagement' shines out amidst the mayhem of 'Ordeal' and 'Carnival's discordant posturing. It's devilishly exciting in the build with Steve Creek's guitar punching a great hole in the vocal before finger-tapping it back to life with some sublime work. The clarity in the chorus is tuneful, hearty and wickedly hooky.
'Icons' certainly lacks finish and, all too often, is to be found descending into formulaic patterns, but little things like the down-tempo arpeggios on 'Motel Carter' and the dynamic bass that lurks within 'The Engagement' are enough to show that Cotheria may just yet surprise us in 2011.
http://www.cotheria.com/
http://www.myspace.com/cotheria
