Cog: The Visitors.

Cog play the Rose ‘n’ Crown, Surfers Paradise on Wednesday, the Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay on Thursday, the Gabba Hotel on Friday, the Sands Tavern, Maroochydore on Saturday and the Big Day Out at the Gold Coast Parklands on January 19.

“At this point in time the live show’s the most important thing we do,” Cog drummer Lucius Bower explains. “At the moment, it’s all we’ve really got. We haven’t really got a big budget for music videos, and we’re not all over commercial radio. It’s our only form of really direct communication to let people know we’re around.”

What Cog also have, however, is two fine EPs; Just Visiting parts one and two. While Part One is packed with bombast and paints a fairly heavy picture of the band, Just Visiting Part Two shows the band in a more atmospheric light, and should go a long way to dismissing the somewhat unjust Tool comparisons they found themselves up against following the release of Part One.

“It was all done in one recording session,” he confirms. “All in our rehearsal studio on an eight track. It’s as primitive as you can get these days. We just chose at the time to snip it up the guts and turn it in to two releases, and make them both different in dynamics. The first ones the rockier heavier side, and the second one is not mellower, but it has more dynamics and mood to it, I guess.”

Did you think about putting it all out as one release as an album?

“Yeah, we tossed all that up. We thought if we do two EPs… To digest the songs, because there’s a lot in the songs, it would be best to do it this way. Also, there’s a lot of expectation on you’re first release, and for an independent eight track recording we didn’t have the funds to put it out in one hit. You’ve got to give it the best opportunity you can, and with two EPs you can kind of have a second go. I haven’t seen to many bands do it this way before.”

Cog are amongst the bands put forward in the second round of Big Day Out line up announcements.

“We’re definitely amped up about it. We’ve worked really hard this year. We haven’t rested on our laurels and waited for someone else to help us. After playing through the last year we’re starting to pull the numbers. We’ve had some good support from Triple J, even more so now we’re on the bill, and I guess it all helps at the end of the day.”