(DGR reviews the new album from Cognizance, out 26 January on Willowtip Records)
It wasn’t too long ago we were joking about how Cognizance were one of the better bands when it comes to the “riff-avalanche” style of album – the type of disc that generally picks one particular tempo and sticks to it, leaving the band room to just rattle off part-after-part-after-part atop the listener until, by the end of it, they’ve basically been buried underneath a pile of stuff.
It’s a difficult balance to strike because you can easily get lost in your own creativity and create big, overwhelming works that, by their very nature, are hard to maintain any interest in since everything is so ephemeral and fleeting.
And while Cognizance have remained a sleek and ultra-precise machine for over a decade since the release of their first full length – after having subsisted on a series of singles and EPs – they’ve also slowly hammered and forged their sound into something as fiercely creative and memorably groove-ridden as it is terrifyingly technically-proficient.
Their previous album, Upheaval, picked up where Malignant Dominion left off, and I’ll give you three guesses as to where Phantazein picks up as a starting point a little under two and a half years later.
