SYDNEY hard rock trio Cog have built an enviable reputation and fan base, but it wasn’t always that way.
After forming in 1998, the band impressed many live, but soon became somewhat maligned among the wider community of hard rock and metal fans, who were quick to label them as overly derivative of US progressive metal giants Tool.
This did not deter band members Flynn Gower and Lucius Borich (son of blues guitarist Kevin Borich), from seeking out Tool producer Sylvia Massey to record their debut long-player The New Normal in her studio in the town of Weed, California, in 2004.
The turning point for Cog came with the album’s release when Triple J metal guru Andrew Haug made an impassioned plea for metal fans to give the band a fair go, saying that comparisons to Tool were lazy references based on the bands’ names, rather than their music.
The metal fans listened. Cog was now cool.
Bass player Luke Gower said the support from Triple J, particularly with the debut album, had given the band’s career the shot in the arm it needed.
“The New Normal release made a huge difference in terms of crowd numbers,” Gower said.
“Sylvia Massey had a list as long as your arm and it wasn’t hard to look at her resume and make the decision.”
When the band returned to Massey’s studio in 2007 to lay down second album Sharing Space, things did not go so smoothly, with the studio hitting financial trouble and the recording process being strung out for much longer than planned.
“There were a few problems,” Gower said.
“We had contracts with her and it had a bit of a sour ending.
“She may have lost interest in the project, but it was half our fault.”
If any of this affected the quality of the record it doesn’t show, with Sharing Space earning praise from critics and punters for its daring sound that defies genres without sacrificing hooks, as demonstrated in anthemic single What If?
Gower is not particularly interested in trying to pigeonhole the band into a genre.
“I don’t see us as metal,” he said.
“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest if people want to call us progressive rock.
“It’s a term used to describe bands trying to forge something new.”
- Cog play Metro City on October 24 and at Rockingham’s Dixon Park on November 1 as part of the Revolution Tour, before returning to Perth for the Big Day Out on February 1.