Interview by Kris Peters
Aussie prog rock legends COG don't just spend their time promoting their own music, they also give back to the Australian music scene by regularly taking local bands with them on the road, and now helping run their own music festival to help highlight some of this countries hardest working and quickest rising outfits.
The Other Festival is set down for January 28 at The Tivoli in Brisbane, with COG being joined by Osaka Punch, The Stranger, Bare Bones, The Wrath, Rhino, Mass Sky Raid, Minds End and more in a one day extravaganza that made its debut in 2021.
COG drummer Lucius Borich joined HEAVY earlier this week to chat about The Other Festival and... whatever else he felt like really.
"We're very pumped," he enthused. "Getting the fuel in the tank, getting the cogs all greased up, getting rid of the cogwebs..."
COG have never been a band to over-saturate the market with singles and/or live shows, and as such don't necessarily get the chance to be match fit so to speak when it comes to performing.
"We just did that bunch of five shows with Karnivool on the Monolith Festival," he said, "and went to all of the different states of Australia and we hadn't played - because of COVID and all that stuff - we hadn't played for almost two years. That was a real adjustment. All of a sudden BOOM, you're up in front of 3000, 4000 people, whatever it was, and it was somewhat intimidating. I think we did well, but to try and get in that frame of mind and that environment and feel comfortable after two years of not playing was definitely a challenge, that's for sure. I think we pulled it off and we've got a bit of that still remaining in the tank from doing those shows which was only about four months ago. It definitely requires you to be playing quite a lot to feel confident and comfortable but we just don't seem to have that luxury to some degree. Just given the circumstances of everyone's lives and where we're at in our career but we try to rehearse and get things dialled in and then just get up there and do what we need to do. But to be a well fitted out, oiled up outfit you do need to have regular gigs and it does make it harder when you don't, so it's challenging - which is good in some respects. You could say it adds a lot more dynamic to the performance because you're not playing all the time or jaded. So there's a little bit of that double edged sword there. It's kind of one of those situations."
In the full interview, Lucius talks more about The Other Festival and what to expect, the other bands on the line-up, what sort of criteria is used to select bands on a festival bill, moving from Fortitude Music Hall to The Tivoli, current writing progress and more.