Exclusive Track Premiere: Diskord’s “Cogged Pother”

July 3, 2024

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The fuck is a cogged pother…

On July 12th, 2024, Transcending Obscurity Records will release Bipolarities, the new split from astrodeath skronk-monsters Diskord and kitchen-sink death metal maniacs Atvm. With just a few short days left before the split splits us apart, we’re thrilled to bring you “Cogged Pother,” the third track from Diskord’s side of things. But let’s be honest, you’re being a little greedy at this point even asking us for more morsels of chunk-bassed frothing death metal before you’ve finished your dinner. Behave yourselves.

“Cogged Pother” comes on the heels of lead singles “Shivering, As We Shed Our Hides” and “Onward! To Nowhere.” Because it hurts my already addled brain to figure out how one goes about cogging a pother, I’ve been ruminating on how apt “Onward! To Nowhere” is to Diskord’s sense of reality. That, of course, makes it sound like nothing happens, like there is no there there, like there is simply a nowhere not waiting for us at the end of the not journey that was the not destination of our time with Diskord. Au contraire, mon ami! “Nowhere” is a place that has yet to be discovered, uncovered, bedeviled by our filthy presence; it is a yet-to-be-where, and Diskord whisks us towards it as circuitously as possible. Sure, you start with a spaced-out psychic bass lick before the band mid-pace blasts off with the sort of drunken swaggering that wouldn’t get you many places except maybe on your ass in a stupour. But through all the starts and stops, all the woodblock drumming, all the corkscrew and helixed riffing, all the dissonance, you’re certainly somewhere. Or, at the very least, you’ve been impelled onwards! Onwards in your conception of what prog/tech can be. Onwards in your (mis)understanding of what you do and don’t know about death metal.

All of this you can just copy and paste for “Cogged Pother,” but only if you blenderize it, reconstitute it with some 4d printer, and let it stand alone in its own astrally shocking glory. “Cogged Pother” delights in dissonance but gives you those delicious reprieves of head-banging breakdowns and twisted interludes of doom-crawling madness. We’re taking all sorts of different cues from Demilich‘s warped sense of riff-writing to post-grind Carcass death metal sensibilities. Ultimately, what “Cogged Pother” might be is the interlocking, teeth-in-groove machinations of the suffocating and choking effluvia of our hyper-processed and dehumanized world. Fortunately for us, and perhaps in thanks to the influence of Carcass and The Chasm, there’s a lot of embodied heft, bodily weight, and humanity in “Cogged Pother.” Whether we’re cogs in the machine that is choking us all to death or are the very creatures turning us, each and every one of us, into a one gigantic mechano-humanoid miasmic cloud of planetary erasure, there’s something still innately warm, inviting, playful, and human about “Cogged Pother.”

About the the track—and the split itself—the band had this to say:

“It has been a pleasure to work with our fellow maniacs and labelmates in Atvm on this split release, which also was a welcome break/diversion after working for way too long on the Degenerations album. We first became friends with the Atvm guys back in 2018, when we played together in England. More recently, we had a nice little tour together of the UK, and it is very rewarding to see this split come to fruition! I think our combined approach to strange and mind-bending death metal makes for one helluva sexy package. The song “Cogged Pother” is probably the most complex on our side of the split, which is a good ramp-up to the Atvm side of things, so you better lean back, grab a beer, and pay attention!”

Lean back? Grab a beer? Pay attention? My god, I love doing all those things, especially together. So join me as we join Diskord in enveloping ourselves in the misty, mystical, and mythical nowhere of our journey onwards.