title: The High Cost of Normality

date: March 2005

magazine: Blunt Magazine

writer: Dan Stapleton

THE HIGH COST OF NORMALITY
heavy bondi rockers cog spend the big bucks to achieve their biggest sound yet. By Dan Stapleton

For a minute, COG singer/guitarist Flynn Gower sounds like a record company executive. "We're looking at The New Normal as a truly international release", he says of the band's debut slab, just a few days before it's scheduled to drop on april 12th. "I think it's an album of international quality and it's worthy of the exposure. So we're hoping that it gets released in the other major territories around the world and that it gets a fair go."

Ambitious, perhaps, but Gower is entitled to talk big - he's been waiting seven years for this moment, and COG have put in the hard yards to get here. Since the Sydney three-piece formed, they've built a solid listener base, first through heavy gigging, then with the release of two EPs, Just Visiting numbers 1 and 2. There was also a radio single, "Open Up", that had Triple J listeners salivating in 2003, and now, having finally gained a higher profile, they've made a big budget record that aims straight for the major leagues.

And The New Normal may just get them there. The disc is full of cuts that manage to be simultaneously epic and radio-friendly, tied together by a sound that nods its head to Tool and seventies prog rock before heading off in its own direction.

"Dynamics have always played a large part in our music," says Gowers. "We take songs from intense distorted sections into quiet, minimal sections - similar to Isis in that regard. But on The New Normal we've tried to stretch that further. There's even more of a dynamic shift now."

The New Normal sees COG at their most sonically impressive - thanks largely to producer Sylvia Massy, who's laid down tracks with everyone from System of a Down to Tool to R.E.M., and who cog flew to california to record with. "Technically," says Gower, "this recording is far superior to anything we've done in the past. The Just Visiting EPs were done on an 8-track tape recorder, this thing's been done on a state-of-the-art system with the best equipment money can buy. Sonically, there's a massive improvement."

We got along like a house on fire," says Gower of the collaboration with Massy, "both personally and on a business level. Structurally, she didn't really fuck with the music very much. One of the first things she said was 'Look, I'm Not exactly sure what it is you guys do, but i like it. I don't want to interfere with what you're doing creatively.'" With a completed recording in their hands, COG then headed back Down Under and went into preparation mode, consolidating their relationships with Aloha Management, who took them on in August 2004, and their label, Difrnt Music, who picked COG up as their first signing last year.

With all the pieces in place, it seems like The New Normal is destined to succeed. But when we return to the topic, Gower is more restrained.
"I'm a bit nervous," he says. "I know for a fact we've put a lot of time and effort into the whole process, but i've also reached a point where my head's been inside the project so long that I've lost objectivity."

"People can be so fickle," he adds. "The music business presently is one that's full of unknowns. It's an unknown entity by its very nature. You can think you're onto a winner, but you never really know which way it's gonna go." The New Normal is out now on Difrnt Music. B

Cog
The New Normal
Difrnt Music
8/10
Disoriented by their "heavy" riffs, I've witnessed many a young metaller try to pull off their usual brand of mindless moshing at a COG gig - and fail miserably. Controversially enough, COG's Progressive rythms and layered soundscapes have actually forced the punters to listen to the music. The Band's debut is no different. It's an intelligent album which sees COG move slightly out of their comfort zone and into an indulgent world, where seriously mean riffs and inexplicably good drumming co-exist peacefully with more ethereal sounds the rhyming of the words "lemonade" and "Adelaide". It Proves that COG needn't have spent the last year searching for uncompromising label support in order to create something genuine and brilliant.