Our history with New Jersey’s Cognitive dates back to my enthusiastic 2013 review of their debut EP The Horrid Swarm, which attempted to capture its impact with these words: “By the time it ended, my head had been spun around, like that possessed chick in The Exorcist. You know, all the way around, but somehow still attached.” We spilled still more effusive praise in multiple posts about their self-titled debut album in 2014. And now Cognitive have come roaring back with a second album named Deformity, which will be their first to be released by Unique Leader Records.
To help introduce you to Deformity, we have for you today a lyric video by Scott Rudd for the album’s third track, “Haunted Justice“.
Lyrically, “Haunted Justice” describes a nightmarish vista in vividly horrifying words. As for the song itself, “Haunted Justice” is viscerally savage and stunningly brutal. It seems to follow a three-part strategy of destruction.
At the outset, it’s an overpowering torrent of vicious sound propelled by drumming that simulates a war zone and by slashing, meat-cleaving riffs operating at top speed, coupled with monstrous roars and hair-on-fire shrieking. After this opening barrage has effectively cracked open your cranium like an egg and ejected your eyeballs from the skull due to explosive pressure, then Cognitive start messing with your brain in an eerie, neuron-scrambling interplay between solo guitar and bass. And finally, the band erupt in one last frenzy of rampant hammering decimation.
What an adrenaline-triggering experience this song is! Damned addictive, too.
Deformity was recorded at Full Force Studio by Joe Cincotta (Suffocation, Internal Bleeding, Dehumanized) and mastered at West West Side Studios by Alan Douches (Cannibal Corpse, Converge, Black Breath, Mastodon, et al).
The album will be released by Unique Leader Records on October 28, 2016. For preorder bundles go to THIS LOCATION.
In case you missed it, we’re also including the previously released music video for “Birthing the Deformity”, right after our premiere of “Haunted Justice”. AND the band will be on tour this month and next — and you can check the dates in the flyer that precedes the two videos.
https://www.facebook.com/Cognitivenj
4 Responses to “AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: COGNITIVE — “HAUNTED JUSTICE””
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Somehow I either missed the news of a new Cognitive album, or more likely my steadily worsening memory tossed it into the abyss. This should keep it fresh in my mind, a totally badass track 🙂
. This is just a big OK for me. Nobody in this style seems to be thinking outside of the box or brave enough to push the boundaries.I’m not saying that these guys are untalented or that anybody is wrong for digging them by any means but when bands like this all sound the same they become very forgettable (unfortunately) I wish them the best of luck though! \,,/
agree
I agree about this particular band but you should check out Unfathomable Ruination, Recueil Morbide, and Defeated Sanity as examples of bands that do think outside of the bun.