How slow can you go? Countless Stoner, Sludge and Drone bands have tried to find an answer to this question. Cough contribute their latest output titled Ritual Abuse to this discussion and deliver five epic, slow and hypnotic tracks that give you enough time for several bong hits in between every two hits on the snare drum.
Last Saturday I had the chance to see Cough play in Essen. Their guitarist and singer had to struggle against every single problem you can basically have while playing live:
- effect board hasn’t enough power
- speaker cable plugs out of the speaker cabinet during the first song
- a guy’s mixing the sound who prefers the bands to play at household noise level
- some asshole in the audience screaming “booooring” everytime he has the chance
Anyway, I think the show was fucking good. It was so loud some people felt sick afterwards, because they forgot their earplugs. The drummer was quite impressive, I’ve hardly seen anybody hit the drums that hard. I’m really wondering he didn’t break anything.
All in all Cough are about two things: volume and slowness. They almost drown in repetitive riffs and haunting guitar solos and get lost in harsh feedback orgies now and then. The lyrics are probably all about occultism or weed or both. Cough have the same effect on me like Electric Wizard or Sleep: if I totally embark on the music I could get in some kind of trance. As fucked up as it sounds haha. Although a lot of this music is naturally about monotony, Cough easily manage to remain interesting. With two vocalists, one snarling (like Eyehategod’s vocals for example), one singing (early Sabbath-style), lengthy guitar solos and a lot of good songwriting they really keep you interested throughout the whole record. I really can’t wait for the dirty heat of the summer, when Ritual Abuse will be my everyday soundtrack for sure.
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