It seems as if Virginia has been sitting on musical gold.
From the swamps of the East Coast US state, several great groups have emerged into the light of day, establishing themselves as powerhouses of metal and shaking up the scene with a rattling rage.
Cough are one of these bands, with a heavy sound bound to make eyeballs melt. In support of their close friends and collaborators Windhand, Cough are en route to Australia for a run of tour dates. Frontman David Cisco anticipates some eventful times ahead.
“We’ve never been on tour with a band so close to us,” he says. “They’re from our hometown so I would imagine it’s gonna be a little more comfortable – hopefully not too close for comfort! I’ve never really done this sort of thing before so I guess we’ll have to find out. Although I guess we play and are labelled within the same genre or whatever … for any listener we definitely have a very unique sound compared to Windhand.”
So close are Cough with their fellow swamp people that they even share a bassist. Parker Chandler, a founding member of Cough along with Cisco, splits his time between the two bands. Given the rate of success and recording activity of both acts over recent years, that would surely create confusion for the two groups – but Cisco says otherwise.
“There’s always a bit of a juggle – Windhand has been pretty active in spurts,” he says. “This last year they were quiet, so we were able to get a lot done with Cough. We were able to finish up Still They Pray and get that released.
“There’s always a juggle with Parker being in Windhand. A lot of the time we sort of find the way to keep the songwriting process clean and when we’re all together we try and arrange stuff, you know, once we have time to get all in the same room together.”
You wouldn’t have thought that naming your band Cough would generate the most brutal imagery for a metal band, so where exactly did the name come from? Cisco laughs. “I don’t really remember. Parker and I started this band when we were in college together – we were pretty young. I think it came out of some magazine, I can’t really remember. It was something that just kind of stuck – it kind of embodies what we’re about.”
Try coughing – go on, have a really good hard cough yourself – and the sounds you emit are what Cisco says typify the band’s sound. “I guess there’s not much in the name but it speaks to the music that we write, sort of the dirge of what we create I guess. There’s no big deeper meaning there,” he laughs again.
Indeed, the dirge of their music causes a little consternation among the members of Cough. While they are described in their press material as harbingers of “tortured misanthropic doom”, associates Windhand have been pigeonholed as more ‘traditional’ doom metal, a tag their drummer Ryan Wolfe recently told the BRAG he is strongly against. Labels, as Cisco explains, are not really for Cough either.
“I think inserting a band into a category is extremely limiting, and I think the individuals in this band, we come from a lot of different backgrounds. We’ve just grown up listening to different types of music, not just heavy metal or metal or hard rock, but even like, you know, old bluegrass and country music, you know what I mean?
“It’s very important to take elements from the culture you were raised in and the music that’s affected all parts of your life, and I think to limit to yourself to that category – call it ‘doom metal’ or whatever – I think it’s extremely limiting.”
Still They Pray is out now through Relapse, and you can catch Cough atNewtown Social ClubonWednesday April 5, withWindhand.
