Greetings guys, and welcome to The Black Planet!
First of all, thanks for accepting to do this interview, we appreciate it.
1 – Let’s start with a brief introduction, to those who don’t know this project, Who and what is Cognizance?
Henry: Essentially, its a fat guy and a small Chinaman writing some metal!
2 – What made you start a project like this? When did it really start to take shape?
Henry: The project took shape early 2012 and the reason for starting a band like this is that we both have different tastes in music but we both have a love for blast beats and technical death metal.
3 – After some research on the internet, I came across the fact that 2 of the members are from the UK and the rest are from the USA and Canada. How did this happen and how do you manage the distance?
Henry: There are only two full time members; myself and Alex. Since we are a studio band we get to work with loads of insane musicians like Chris Fayers and Nathan Marshall.
4 – You have very recently released your first studio effort, “Inquisition”. It is self-released, am I right? Please tell us a bit about the creative and recording process, I am curious about how you did this being in different continents. How is it working with such a beast like A. Rudinger?
Henry: Yes man it is fully self released at the moment. Alex Rudinger is awesome to work with, the man is a machine! As for the recording process for our debut its hard to say, as we did pre-production with real amps and cabs and loads of other stuff but then ended up completely changing up the set up and for the actual EP recording sessions. We just used a kemper profiling amplifier. Alex uses guitar pro a lot to show other musicians tracks and as a compositional tool.
5 – What are your musical influences?
Henry: On the vocal front definitely Elliot from Beneath The Massacre, Frank Mullen and Trevor Strnad to name a few.
6 – What subjects do you talk about in your lyrics? Even though you are a technical death metal, your EP imagery illustration reminds me the works of Albrecht Dürer or Gustave Doré, and makes me think that you might have a more obscure lyrical approach.
Alex: I don’t think that the lyrics stand out as being particularly obscure, although it totally depends on your view on the subjects in the lyrics and what meaning you draw from them! I’m a massive science nerd so the lyrics are centred around our current understandings of different constituents of reality and progressions within scientific discovery, each song sort of has a connection. Although when I put the lyrics together I didn’t really intend for that to be the case haha, but I like the way that it came out that way.
7 – Have you played live yet? If not, are you planning to or will this be a studio project?
Alex: No dice, we haven’t played live yet! It breaks my balls but perhaps one day it might come together that way. We’re not really pushing the live idea as of yet, we’re just trying to establish our name and keep the material coming, then depending how things shape up there is a good chance we will create a live line up and hopefully do some touring. That’s a long way ahead so I cant comment too much yet, we’ll see.
8 – Back to the EP, now that “Inquisition” is out, how is the feedback from the people, and reviews from the media?
Alex: The feedback we’ve received so far has been great, really happy with it and for all the media coverage we’ve been getting. We’re just two guys that enjoy making this style of music and we didn’t expect to get such a welcoming response, so that’s really motivating and makes us feel like all our effort is worthwhile. We’ve had a few people contact us regarding reviews but I haven’t actually seen a full-detailed review yet, so that will be interesting.
9 – Why did you decide to release the EP on your own?
Alex: It was a no brainer, in no way could we imagine a label releasing our first CD, we didn’t think it was worth trying as we were happy enough to release it ourselves. We’re used to being in bands that have to cover all costs off their own backs so this isn’t anything new to us.
10 – What can you tell us about your plans for the future? A full-length, perhaps?
Alex: At the moment, we’re going to be heading into some studio sessions in just under two weeks to record two new tracks that will be going on a demo we will be releasing around May/June time. Our aim is to release it as an album teaser and hopefully we’ll pull things together and release an album towards the end of the year, depending on how things shape up! We’ve got some really exciting stuff going on with these two new tracks, there’s going to be some killer musicians featured.
11 – We are quickly reaching the end, here, which is a shame… Any last words for those who haven’t checked you guys out yet?
Alex For anyone who hasn’t checked us yet, if you’re into modern extreme metal, please feel free to download our EP from any blogspots its posted on, or you can grab it from CD baby for $3 (thats if you’re feeling generous haha). If you’re a facebook user, give our page a like man. We’re always doing give-aways and posting cool updates/ pictures, drop us a line! Huge thanks to everyone that’s already checked us out, cant say how much you guys rule.
Thank you very much for your time, all the best for your future, and keep in touch!
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