Matricide, the third full-length from New Jersey’s Cognitive, is a significant leap forward for the band. The most significant change from their 2016 release Deformity is that vocalist Jorel Hart stepped down and was replaced by new vocalist Shane Jost, who offers a slightly different vocal approach. The other noticeable change is that whereas Deformity was like a constant jackhammer to the brain with its overt brutality, Matricide is more dynamic and less focused on crushing through brutality alone.
There’s more melody on songs like “Torn from the Void” than Cognitive has ever employed before, and Jost’s vocal range shines in his varied deliveries. The album still oozes technicality, and tech death fans will have a field day with the forty minutes found on Matricide. Decibel spoke with guitarist Rob Wharton about the album to go along with a full stream, available below. You can order it in the US and in Europe here.
Aside from lineup changes, I think just growing as musicians and maturing. Pushing ourselves at our instruments, focusing on songwriting, etc. It’s all is a natural evolution and I’d like to think it shows on this album.
We’ve known Shane for a while, and he had filled in for Jorel before. It was kind of an easy choice since Shane is a great singer and his life is set up to tour like we do.
Were there certain themes or ideas you were focused on when writing Matricide?
Most of the lyrics were just about humanity just sucking as a whole, and as more lyrics came out we went with the album title as we realized a lot of the lyrics were about how we ruin everything.
I think we started writing for this record earlier than the last album. We did a lot more pre-production stuff earlier. Our bass player actually wrote the whole last song on the album, which also was a first. I also think each member of the band had a lot of emotion and personal experiences since Deformity came out and it made its way onto this record. I think this record was a very honest, from the heart record.
We play Building Temples of Death in Houston the day it comes out (October 26). We also play Puerto Rico in December, and then we’re in the middle of planning a tour with Micawber and Hath for January. Some bigger stuff is in the works for next year that we can’t talk about yet, but as it gets closer will pop up.
