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Cog.
 So what do you do when you're broke after six months of living in the US, lost your job, been booted out of your place, and your visa is up? If your drummer Lucius Borich, you fly back to Sydney, form a monster of a band called Cog, unleash your debut album 'The New Normal' upon an unsuspecting Australia, and tour the nation spreading your musical joy.
"I was alone in the States, writing my own music, but I still kept in touch with Flynn [Gower, vocals/guitar]) because we'd played in a previous band together. He said he was writing as well, so we decided to see if what we both had could co-exist... and it did."
But you ask him why they didn't base the band in the States, and Borich cracks up in cheeky laughter, "Yeah well, that was the plan! Flynn sold all his gear, saved up all his money, he was getting all excited about coming over, then I turn up on his doorstep back in Australia and he's looking at me going 'what the fuck are you doing here, I'm supposed to be coming over?!' He got the shits and he was a bit disappointed, but I think it kind of worked out in the end."
'Kind of worked out' is an understatement. After recruiting Flynn's brother Luke on bass in 1999, Cog went on to tour the country extensively for the next couple of years. 2002 saw the band receive the Best Emerging Live Act of NSW award, followed by the release of 'Just Visiting' Parts 1 and 2 EPs which were voted the Number 1 Australian Release by Triple J's Three Hours of Power. From there on Cog was up, up and away, landing gigs at festivals like Offshore, St. Kilda and the 2003 Big Day Out, as well as support slots for bands like System Of A Down and The Mark of Cain.
Fast forward to 2005: Cog are creeping up, and they're creeping up fast. The release of the debut album 'The New Normal' proves that this Bondi trio flays the ass off 99 percent of their Australian peers. However, tell Borich that and he starts to talk about US producer Sylvia Massey's contribution to the album.
"She was a massive influence sonically. She basically said 'I don't know what you're doing, but I love it and want to be a part of it'. There are only a couple of songs which she helped us structure, but the rest she didn't want to mess with, and that's why the album sounds like Cog. She was there to make sure the music was captured properly with the recording techniques, that's where she's the artist, and it meshed together beautifully, the result is a great marriage of her art and ours."
Borich adds that the concept of Cog being a heavy metal band is a mystery to him. "We're not metal, we're a hybrid of lots of things and this record shows it." And if you want a damn long answer to a question, ask him what to expect from 'The New Normal' and he will eagerly get into the details.
"There's distorted heavy sections, lots of ambient stuff, lots of different rhythms in there, time signatures, sometimes there's a lot of straight-ahead beat stuff as well, and it's melodic in terms of the vocals because this is the first time all three of us are singing. We liked the layer aspect of being able to utilise our voices to make another type of sound, a melody, and I got a sampler so I'm triggering off guitar samples and stuff, which has added another dimension as well. I know we get the Tool comparison, but it's only to do with not being conventional in songwriting, letting songs breathe and make their own path, instead of squashing everything into three and a half minutes. There are a couple of songs on the record that run for, like, ten minutes. We're four weeks into the tour for this album as we speak, and it's just great giving that different kind of music to people, they never know what they're gonna get!"
Cog's The New Normal Tour includes support bands In The Grey and Karnivool, an interesting choice, as the three bands sound considerably different from one another. "I think it's better than having three bands who sound exactly the same, for my money anyway. But it was really, really, really hard choosing because there's fuck all bands that get out of their city and tour.
"But one of the reasons we chose In The Grey was because they're a band that's pretty much willing to scrape, beg, and borrow to go up and down to play to everyone, anyone; they live on bread and Nutella, did you know?" Borich laughs. "Karnivool are the same. They've been doing really well on this tour so far, and they've been selling great merch and CDs and stuff like that because they don't have a record company, so they've been doing some good business. But we wanted to have bands whose music we liked, and we got them in the end."
Adelaide can expect to get bitten by the Cog bug, Borich warns,."There's a song, Charades, it references Adelaide a lot. We've never really done that well there, but I think it's gonna go down pretty well this time so I'm looking forward to that part of the tour,"he laughs.
And once they've brought the music to the people, what's next for the guys? Borich ponders, "More touring. Unless we pay back the money that we've borrowed to make this record, we won't be making a second one!"
Nina Bertok
 | dB Magazine proudly present Cog at Flinders Uni Tavern on Fri 27 May and the Governor Hindmarsh on Sat 28 May (both shows with In The Grey). 'The New Normal' is out now through Difrnt Music. |
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