2023 ARTISTS IN FOCUS

COG

A testament to Cog’s creative camaraderie, Flynn Gower (vocals, guitar) and Lucius Borich (drums), have been playing together since 1998, the two engaging Luke Gower, the brother of Flynn, to play bass. Now a trio with an entrenched bond, Cog established themselves as a popular gig attraction in Sydney and the surrounding state of New South Wales, and following the release of a 2000 demo recording, Pseudo, they were soon signed by the independent label Little Samurai, resulting in a few EP releases: Just Visiting, Pt. 1 (2002), Just Visiting, Pt. 2 (2002), and Open Up (2003).

Cog’s full-length debut album, The New Normal (2005), is the result of working with Sylvia Massy, who had produced Tool’s Undertow (1993), and is now hailed as a classic. Having debuted in the Top 20 of the albums chart, hitting number one on the Australian Independent Recordings (AIR) chart and was voted number 50 in the Australian Albums of All Time; moreover, the album spawned the popular radio single Run, which reached the Top Five of the AIR singles chart.

Cog returned in 2018 with singles The Middle, Altered States and Drawn Together proving they’d lost none of their potency neither in their songwriting or within the live shows that accompanied the new music.

MAMMAL

Mammal are an Australian band that formed in March 2006. Mammal rose up the ranks of the Australian music scene very quickly. Their first self-titled EP was recorded soon after the band came together. Their debut live album “Vol:1 The Aural Underground” was recorded just 4 months after the band started touring at a sold-out show at The Evelyn Hotel on 2 February 2007. Mammal also released a single titled “Slaves/Nagasaki in Flames” AA side, featuring 3 songs. Mammal entered the studio on 21 April 2008 to begin recording their debut studio album, The Majority which was released in August 2008. It peaked at No. 51 on the ARIA Albums Chart in early September. Some of the band’s songs, including Hell Yeah!, New Breed Judas and Slaves, received regular airplay on Australian radio station Triple J.

Ezekiel Ox, lead singer of the Melbourne funk/punk juggernaut had this to say about Mammal playing Thrashville: “Thrashville is the kind of festival that every band wants to play. The perfect blend of hospitality and stadium production. Mammal will be playing never before heard tracks from their new album in their set, bring your dancing pants.”

CIVIC

One of the most exhilarating bands to emerge in recent years, CIVIC have reimagined the reckless intensity of proto-punk for an era of endless uncertainty. On their 2021 debut album Future Forecast, the Melbourne-based five-piece offered up a barrage of songs matching their frenetic sound with both self-aware outpouring and incisive observation of the world around them—a dynamic that’s earned massive critical acclaim as well as admiration from the likes of punk legend Henry Rollins. As further shown on their latest sophomore full-length Taken By Force—an album the band aptly sums up as “1984 meets Endless Summer”—CIVIC joyfully obliterate the line between furious catharsis and unbridled fun, introducing a vital new energy into today’s musical landscape.  FULL BIO HERE.

DUST

The project of dual guitarist-vocalists Gabriel Stove and Justin Teale, bassist Liam Smith, guitarist, and saxophonist Adam Ridgway, and drummer Kye Cherry, offer an invigorating new take on Australian post-punk: progressive, catchy, and irresistible. Just as artistically motivated by the fragmented, free-genre steps of Yung Lean and Burial, merging experimental jazz and electronica into a sound as immediate and bashert as Inhaler and Violent Soho. Since forming against the backdrop of the pandemic in 2020, dust have gathered at every chance available to sharpen their intricate sound, delivering a furiously intoxicating live show to fans across NSW’s east coast with appearances supporting Bad//Dreems, Eliza & The Delusionals, RAAVE TAPES, Towns, Pist Idiots, Party Dozen, CLAMM, VOIID, This That Festival and more.