By Nigel Bird

Nigel Bird speaks with COG’s Lucius Borich and Shihad’s Tom Larkin

Bondi three piece, COG have carved themselves a solid live reputation over the past six years. Speak to anyone who has seen them and your bound for a mouthful of praise, but no-one can quite give a real description of their musical style. The focused three piece, intent on creating their sound, can safely be proud of their debut masterpiece ‘The New Normal’, recorded in the US with producer Sylvia Massy (Tool, System of a Down, REM). ‘The New Normal’ provides the listener with syncopated sound-scapes and unconventional hard rhythms and is music for the thinkers, driven by one Lucius Borich. His drumming is hard hitting and as precise as a German scientist. I spoke to Lucius whilst on tour in the van and posed a few questions to find out about him, his drums and the new album.

Nigel Bird: Do you have any drum endorsements, if so who endorses you?

Lucius Borich: Roland, DW, Zildjian, Vic Firth and I play Evans drum heads.

You’ve done well getting all the stuff you need...

Yeah it’s taken a while, but I’ve finally got it, and it’s great.

What type of drums do you play and what’s your set up?

A DW kit, a maple bass drum 24 x 18, with 10, 12, 14, 16 birch fast toms, a 12 inch rota tom, A variety of Zildjian cymbals, splashes and a small ice bell. Recently I’ve just introduced a whole bunch of electronic stuff, I’ve got some Roland stuff —a SBDF Sample pad, that triggers loops. I got 4 external pads as well (PD8), which is really cool, I’m triggering off guitar sounds and guitar solo’s and other bits and pieces.

Being such a hard hitter, how often would you crack a cymbal?

(laughs) Well I’m second in the country for breaking the most cymbals, so fairly often, yeah.

How often, once every two weeks?

Na not that much, but If I’m playing a lot of gigs it will be probably once a month.

How long have you been playing?

I started playing live, like going on the road when I was fourteen, but I’ve got photo’s of me hitting drums when I was three.

What’s your favourite thing to do, when you’re not on tour, and not playing drums?

It would be playing guitar, writing music and surfing.

What’s the best drummer joke that you’ve heard?

I forget them all, I’d give up drums if I had to remember all the drummer jokes. I’d get depressed and have to take anti-depressants (laughs). Ok I remember this one, ‘How do you know the drum riser is level?’ — ‘the drummer is dribbling out of both sides of his mouth’.

Despite the drummer jokes, people that play the kit, in a lot of acts, also fill other roles within the band as a business. Do you fill any of the business type roles within the band?

Not really, it depends, everyone in the band has specific little roles, here and there that we take on, and I guess at the end of the day if one of us is kind of slipping behind we pull each other back up.

How nice is it to have a drum tech, with of all of your stuff!!?

Yeah it’s good, especially when he is really good looking (laughs)

He’s sitting next to you I’m assuming?

Lucius laughs, but pays respect to the A4 (Roger Stephan) —drum tech.

So you start to get an idea of Lucius, he plays a full kit and belts the living hell out of it, COG have toured hard and played with some big acts, I thought I’d ask some questions about the COG live shows.

What was your most memorable show with COG? And why? It’s ok if you pick two!

The other night at the Metro was pretty good, which is the first time, the first gig we’d sold out at that venue. That was a really special night, I think the energy in the crowd was great. It was a pretty honest vibe that was going on, so that was really nice…. And, I think the other gig was at a place called The Grafton Post Office, which was on a verandah and was with the Test Eagles. I actually had to set the kit up, side of stage… It was pretty weird.

What about your worst gig, what was the worst thing that has happened in your career?

Sometimes it’s gear problems that you know, you end up going ‘I wish we could get this over and done with and move on’. I mean it’s funny, at most gigs you’ve got something where your going ‘Oh, here we go’ and you’ve got to try and get over the hurdle and not let it affect your performance.

Band riders - What do you personally request for in your refreshment rider when on tour?

Ahh, the ol’ band rider. Well just bottles of water and maybe have a Jack Daniels and soda after the gig and pineapple juice (laughs) - that’s it. We’re not really a big enough band to warrant getting any kind of rider that’s… extravagant. The oysters and prawns will come later, I won’t be eating them though - I can’t eat shellfish.

The New album, "The New Normal" is all over the place, featured in magazines and radio nationally thanks to the first single ‘Resonate’. I asked Lucius a bit about it’s making.

The recording in California, how was it? How long did it take?

It took about two months, the drum takes took about ten days for twelve tracks. We recorded it in an old art décor 1930’s theatre. there was the stage, and like two hundred seats and then at the back of the room, the recording gear. So it was a totally different environment from a typical studio. You know it didn’t have that sterile vibe. It had a nice vibe about it, something really different, which I think helped the music and just overall mentally how we were approaching what we were doing. It was great. Plus we were in another country, which was really good as well. Sylyia Massy who was producing (the album The New Normal), she has spent years acquiring all of this great technology and sophisticated gear. So it was really good to be able to utilise that.

Would you go back to record there again?

Yeah, definitely, it’s one of those places that’s very isolated. It wasn’t in any city, it was in a tiny little town called Weed. It was an amazing little spot. Kind of like Byron Bay meets Twin Peaks, you know there were a lot of nutcases running around.

COG's  "The New Normal" is out now.

>> Read Hard Hittin' Hands Part 2.