Cognos

Cognos Ventures to the Unknown Reaches of Progressive Metal (Early Album Stream)


It’s difficult to know how much fun Cognos have writing their music—it’s difficult to know much about them beyond what little information they provide in fact—but it’s apparent they’re having fun playing it. This isn’t the same fun found in balls-to-the-wall hard rock; it’s the exuberant satisfaction derived from attaining equilibrium. This balance comes through in the group’s upcoming debut Cognos, which harmonizes its extremity with progressive metal stretched to its limits. Treat your ears to their mix of serenity and uproar in our early album stream below.

Cognos have sworn to anonymity to assert the experience over their identity. While that approach could steer them towards stiffness, their forthcoming album instead embraces some of extreme metal’s most boisterous traits. Thus, calling Cognos ‘progressive metal’ is correct insofar that they cherry-pick from all heavy metal corners, like bold arena-rock riffs and blast beats out of some forgotten 90s death metal EP, alongside world and new age music.

There’s a science fiction leaning on Cognos, evidenced by the expansive tracks “Cometary’s Waltz” and “Orb,” and the compact pair of interludes “Light Years Coral” and “If Skylines Collide” bring this underpinning to the forefront. Each dabbles with lush textures like they’re documents of the universe expanding. But Cognos is best regarded for their chest-forward embrace of fun without sacrificing ingenuity. The mid-album highlight “Plenary Void” struts in a way that borders on arrogance. Its infectious vocal interplay between guttural growls and stadium-packing howls dances atop a virtuosic guitar gauntlet.

Cognos is then space-fairing, interdimensional progressive metal that sounds nothing like what space-fairing, interdimensional progressive metal should sound like. That’s fantastic, because much like the band’s anonymity, it lobotomizes expectations and, as Cognos puts it, “… encourages us to set aside prejudices and simply listen. If it manages, even for a split second, to transport you away from where you are, COGNOS will have delivered.”

The band adds:

Full agnosticism towards the cosmos and beyond. We created this to try to approach the overwhelming nature of contemplating what we will never understand. This is our craft to portray and honor it.
You won’t find humanity here. You won’t find complacency. So please, enjoy.

“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.” – Helen Keller

Cognos releases on October 22 through Willowtip Records.