Among the Dead: How to Become A Ghost

vote
7.0

• Band:
  Cogas
• Duration: 00:43:00
• Available from: 24/04/2025

Streaming not yet available

Moving on tiptoe and remaining firmly linked to an ethics of DIY, the Cogas continue their path inside the contemporary black/death scene, printing a second full-length about about four years after the good debut “Unconscious Sons of the Reptile God”.
A handful of songs that, if from a stylistic point of view do not introduce significant novelties compared to the past, sound like the result of a formation to which, today, it is interested in giving one's music a more emotional and narrative cut, intertwining the warp of a sad and dramatic narrative that is well married to the content of the texts, dedicated-to mention the press-kit-a “Those who lost themselves in that postcard inferment called Sardinia. Generational traumas, past, present and future, are told through the wounds, both physical and spiritual, of any young man“.
“AMONG the Dead: How to Become a Ghost” therefore sees the Italian-London band to re-establish itself to that mix of Death and Black Metal, heaviness and melancholy, already savored in 2021, but with an eye for the construction of songs that, far from presenting progressive ambitions, develop 'for grades', often starting from an arpeggio, a whisper, of intensity between riffs and changes of time also rather numerous, as well as various.
Not surprisingly, the average duration of the individual episodes stands around the five minutes, giving way to each register – from the purely brutal one to the most atmospheric one – to breathe and leave their mark, in a flow ideally placed to the crossroads between the ferocity of people such as Dark Funeral, Hour of Penance and Necophobic and the melodic attitude of the Polish school of Mgła and Blaze of Perdition. Coats of comparison, which if sometimes make their influence felt clearly (the final “the flame that I breathe” sounds very similar to a “exercises in futility VI”), ours are equally managed to manage without losing a lot in the attitude and authority, then supporting the very solid individual performances for the details that passes above all from an exquisitely warm and organic production.
Ultimately, we are not faced with a work that can move the balance (underground) of the vein, but of a job that, however, it is never lacking to express the ardor and expertise of a group evidently interested in doing things well, playing what he likes most with transport and knowledge of the facts. The second is also good.