Cojones

The Croatian band with the distasteful Spanish term of courage for a name has released their latest album that encapsulates their self-proclaimed pluck in some ways but, overall, comes across as a fairly oxymoronic adjective in the end.

Bend To Transcend is a powerfully constructed album - The riffs are thunderous and heavy with crashing cymbals and snapping snares thrashing out behind the screechy whiny guitars. But for a band that is occasionally defined as being predisposed to psychedelic rock styling, there’s just not enough eastern influence there. In fact, the groovy front cover is about the most psychedelic thing about this album.

Noticeably, each song has a distinctive distorted guitar effect infused into its makeup, working its way to the fore during hooks and solos, that catches the ear particularly for me. These are not major elements in the songs and not much emphasis is placed on them but they at least allow you to distinguish a Cojones identifiable imprint so that you don’t think you’re listening to the Foo Fighters here...and this bunch really does sound like the Fighters.

From the arrangements to the themes, there are so many similarities to the American hard rock giants, but Bojan Kocijan’s vocals especially resemble Dave Grohl’s tone – the pair are so comparable that it takes a trained ear to distinguish the subtle differences. Mainly, Kocijan’s conveyance is punchier; more aggressive whilst Grohl is capable of exhibiting more aspects to his delivery, such as changes in timbre and also has the genius of his kaleidoscopic lyrics.

Cojones, throughout the album, appear largely reluctant to slow things down or quieten things up for more than a few tenuous seconds. Their music has one destructive goal and that’s to be as aggressive as possible seemingly. Because of this, songs sound alike with the band avoiding trying anything unconventional to what they're used to. But in fairness, they do say stick to what you know. The tidy little song ‘Hey Baby’ is about as sweet as this band get but it only lasts for half the song before they kick things back up several notches to their comfort zone.