Atavist
capitanostupido
capitanostupido
This is one of a few Albums that sounds exactly the Cover looks like. Fabulous.
Grimmrobe
Grimmrobe
Cowardice, as Thou and Emma Ruth Rundle did before them, creates sludge metal that teems with emotion and soul, and it burns with a fiery passion that few can match.
One of the best albums of '24. Favorite track: Cloisters.
One of the best albums of '24. Favorite track: Cloisters.
Reverend Fuzzcut
Reverend Fuzzcut
This an insanely heavy, yet emotionally provocative piece of sludge. It’s depressing, decrepit, and clearly rusting at the hinges, but there’s a sense of organic freshness running throughout the entire record. Yes, the bleak, grim, hell-cold frostiness of the record is immediately noticeable, but beneath the grime and oily soot, there’s this intangible bit of hope I can’t help but reach out and try to emotionally grasp, but try as I might, it slips through my fingers.
John English
John English
AOTY '24
Heavy emotional ambitious. Very enjoyable album. Favorite track: Hall of Mages.
Heavy emotional ambitious. Very enjoyable album. Favorite track: Hall of Mages.
ryla
Meth Sage
Skol
KeeganZ
providence_lost
happinessisbunk
Sean
Kevin Poopton
doomdeath
fromashesroseme
GrimPateuthis
Zubkoff
TV's Ross
kronkite_klondike
drgwb
Eric Gross
Bertrand Marchal
Joe Thorne
jordancozza
Evan Helfrich
Cookieat
Atanamar Sunyata
Thatguy
John Thompson
Bunker
vecuu
phil_chokeword
JC
michelle
Marc Leclerc
josh clay
Jack Bauer
Dan
David Catalano
White Elk
luke sesh
grimm
Lucas Lorenz
Jay
Nate
cdunbarc
dogvanya
Thoughts Of Decay
Sam Atkinson
tommy j
Sludge 427
Riff Worshipper
tOm G
Erin Sullivan
zurk666
Stephen M Bennett
Clayton Buchanan
hereticaddem
mandybb
Gorehound
Maotsedude
sadmetalfeller
2xhni
quasiotter
Rob Hammer
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Streaming + DownloadIncludes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Purchasable with gift cardDownload available in 24-bit/96kHz.
$11 USD or more
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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album"Atavist" DLP vinyl on gold/ultra clear smoke marble color way. This version is only available directly from the band.
Comes with two 12" vinyl, inner insert lyric sheet and custom art by Robin Harris (Mystic Barbarism).
Recorded by Scot Moriarty at Backroom Studios
Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Redmount Studios
Front and back covers created by Adam Burke at Nightjar Illustration
Layout and design by Brendan Coughlin
Includes unlimited streaming of Atavist via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Download available in 24-bit/96kHz.ships out within 60 daysPurchasable with gift card$30 USD or more
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Cassette + Digital Album"Atavist" double album on metallic gold 2-sided cassette. Limited to 100 copies.
Inner multi-panel J-card with custom artwork by Robin Harris (Mystic Barbarism)
Recorded by Scot Moriarty at Backroom Studios
Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Redmount Studios
Front and back covers created by Adam Burke at Nightjar Illustration
Layout and design by Brendan Coughlin
Includes unlimited streaming of Atavist via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Download available in 24-bit/96kHz.ships out within 60 daysPurchasable with gift card$10 USD or more
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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album"Cloisters" is the first single, and track 2 off of the upcoming Cowardice album titled "Atavist."
This is a promotional lathe cut 7" to promote the single. Printed in extremely limited quantity and will not be re-pressed.
Pressed on ultra-clear vinyl.
Includes unlimited streaming of Atavist via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Download available in 24-bit/96kHz.ships out within 14 days9 remainingPurchasable with gift card$10 USD or more
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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album"Atavist" DLP vinyl on red/orange transparent haze color way.
Comes with two 12" vinyl, inner insert lyric sheet and custom art by Robin Harris (Mystic Barbarism).
Recorded by Scot Moriarty at Backroom Studios
Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Redmount Studios
Front and back covers created by Adam Burke at Nightjar Illustration
Layout and design by Brendan Coughlin
Includes unlimited streaming of Atavist via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Download available in 24-bit/96kHz.ships out within 14 days1 remainingPurchasable with gift card$30 USD or more
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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album"Atavist" DLP vinyl on green/red splatter color way. This is the EU variant of the release.
Comes with two 12" vinyl, inner insert lyric sheet and custom art by Robin Harris (Mystic Barbarism).
Recorded by Scot Moriarty at Backroom Studios
Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Redmount Studios
Front and back covers created by Adam Burke at Nightjar Illustration
Layout and design by Brendan Coughlin
Includes unlimited streaming of Atavist via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Download available in 24-bit/96kHz.ships out within 14 days1 remainingPurchasable with gift card$30 USD or more
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1. |
To the Hilt of Humanity
10:50
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The tumbril rocks
‘long to the scaffold
And you still want
To negotiate
What will it take
To demonstrate
The poverty
Of capitulation
We’re all so drunk with the fallacy
We’re all so fucking content
To equivocate
And throw up our hands
So I refuse
To cast my lot with you
Traitorous
Collaborator
We only ever just contemplate
Without producing results
Believing we aren’t replaceable
But never willing to fight
Go on
Bury
Your head
In hypotheticals
We will
Meet again
With your
Bodkin pressed against my throat
The path that you’ve elected
To travel always lies
Between naive ambition
And blood and betrayal
Your empty musings
And sophistry are like
A conversation
With the firing squad
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2. |
Cloisters
05:45
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Why
Must we tolerate
The asphyxiation
The distance
The restraints
They bind us with
And the cells we abide
We pass by
Without a word
As we circumambulate
It’s simple and quiet
To shelter inside
But it comes with a price
We may humble our minds
And conquer desire
But we are alive no less
They coldly spy
With despotic eyes
And scan for impieties
When they moralize
We internalize
Their odious rhetoric
And all the while
These zealots and tyrants
Sap their flocks of vitality
Their empty lives
Cheap and vulgarized
By their condescension
As we are deprived
They privatize
and deflect those who question
Look deep inside
you remember the lies
you only suppress
the memory
It’s simple and quiet
To shelter inside
But it comes with a price
We may humble our minds
And conquer desire
But we are alive no less
They coldly spy
With despotic eyes
And scan for impieties
When they moralize
We internalize
Their odious rhetoric
And all the while
These zealots and tyrants
Sap their flocks of vitality
Their empty lives
Cheap and vulgarized
By their condescension
these are our lives
these are our lives
these are our lives in the cloisters
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3. |
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4. |
Unforgeable Key
09:07
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How can we make
An appeal to our gods
Guilt and self loathing
And selfishness and grift
For the right to exist
Without breaking all the laws
We are all mercenaries
We are all prostitutes
Living In a state
Of perpetual whoredom
And barely stealing
a paltry gasp
You are their servant
You are their concubine
Condemned for the remainder
Of your hollow, fleeting life
The craftsman pours his soul out
Onto a molten pyre
But in this life there will be
Never sufficient time
There is no bargain
That can be struck
With a bloodsucking leech
There never will be
A compromise
That will be honored
Life held so cheaply
Cheap as their word
So vapid and empty
We are subsisting
On table scraps
That they throw us like beasts
No measure
Of mastery
Will ever be enough
To satisfy
It’s all a fucking pretense
To keep you searching in vain
For a moment’s respite
From this living hell
Always beholden
To the caprice of
An aristocracy
Of cynics
Of careerists
Of opportunists
Stubbornly persist
Slaving over the fire
Maybe things will be different
This time around
You’ll keep on failing to master
The unforgeable key
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5. |
Eastern Woodland Reverie
09:02
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It’s come to my attention
That it’s been far too long
Since our last sojourn
Into the weeping vines
Amid the crooked husks
And the hollowed trunks
I want to lay my bones down
Upon the the wooded glen
I’m met with new encroachments
With every pilgrimage
The waystones keep eroding
The path is lost to time
The whispering branches echo
A retributive call
To reconquer
And reinvigorate the wild
I am
The magus in the wood
I bear
The aegis on my breast
Whoso-
Ever does transgress
My threshold
Shall be swallowed up
And what gives you the right
To loose your ploughs
Upon the roots
Into the soil and through
Your presumption
Is most telling, to us
Your poisoned furrows
We tread upon
I am
The magus in the wood
I bear
The aegis on my breast
Whoso-
Ever does transgress
My threshold
Shall be swallowed up
This wood Is my ward
Now and for as long As long as I shall live
An epoch shall pass
under my watch
Under this canopy
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6. |
Moss Stone
01:57
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These are our lives.
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7. |
Clairvoyance Anxiety
10:26
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Fear, All-consuming
Fear
permeates the
Air
Desperately gasping
Cold,
eclipsing
Wretch
With every breath
Hide
Your guilty face now
Your
Many transgressions
They see you suffocating
(Deep within)
They hear your trembling pulse
The walls that you erected
(fall apart)
Your sanctum is defiled now
(compromised)
Survey your ruined fortress
(what remains)
Shelter within its walls
But know that they’ll soon find you
(coward you are)
They covet that which flows
(in your veins)
And now they smell your
Fear,
That which sustains them
And keeps Their legions sated
Vile Sustenance
Nothing can break their vigil
Nothing escapes their sight
So we must give no quarter
On this troubled night
They see you suffocating
(Deep within)
They hear your trembling pulse
The walls that you erected
(fall apart)
Your sanctum is defiled now
(compromised)
Survey your ruined fortress
(what remains)
Shelter within its walls
But know that they’ll soon find you
(coward you are)
They covet that which flows
(in your veins)
The sanguine scent
Clings to the air
The craven blood
Pollutes the heart
The routed flocks
Now take flight
The shattered ranks
In disarray
The spirit breaks (down)
And with it calm
All that remains
A servile
existence
Gird your sword
And grit your teeth
Bend your will
Accept defeat
Will you fall
With dignity
Or will you yield
And cede your tithe
You fucking louse
Pathetic groveller
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8. |
The Diminutive Principle
07:19
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You are the predator,
With talons concealed
Laced with a potent,
Lethal concoction
Disarming smile
Paralyzing tongue
Preying upon
The vulnerable
I will not suffer it,
To entertain your entreaty
A master of cunning
Though I’m not so beguiled
Feigning bewilderment,
Despondency
Others may waver,
But I am unphased
Your manicured etiquette
A Trojan horse
Disguising subservience
As creativity
Not one fucking cell
In your body organic
A plain manufacture,
A facsimile
You who once forbade us
From seeking the truth
Now think yourself a champion
Of free inquiry
An inquisitor general,
You’ve merely switched hats
Playing the victim,
With blood on your hands
It’s a self righteous
Faux-martyrdom
These wolves in sheeps clothing
Carve out for themselves
So remain vigilant
And be on your guard
Reject their deception
And strike viciously
It’s a self righteous
Faux-martyrdom
These wolves in sheeps clothing
Carve out for themselves
So remain vigilant
And be on your guard
Reject their deception
And strike viciously
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9. |
Aphelion
01:34
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10. |
Annulment
09:37
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All the lights have dimmed
The infertile plains, ablaze
Our last communion
Can we be all alone
I’m all alone now
Steeped in the asphalt
Crumbling high-ways
Connecting the abscess
Like plague stricken veins
Soon to be purged
in the penultimate phase
The bleeding epicenter
Cauterized by flame
Abandon reform
Provision for war
Dig shallow graves for the dead:
Soon there’ll be more
The language of violence
A lingua franca for our age
The law of the sword
Commands our decorum
Deadbolts have fastened
The fault lines have formed
This is no contagion
This is your DNA
Bid farewell
The place called home
Once it’s been laid waste
They'll poison the well
There is a lost world
Being reborn
It flickers like candlelight
In the infertile plains
An unmarked grave
Cradling a babe
In aqueducts of excrement
The seeds germinate
These darkest of days
This haunting malaise
Alone in my armchair
Counting down the days
Take shelter now
And ready yourselves
For the journey ahead
The path is a long one and littered with the dead
Take shelter now
And ready yourselves
For the journey ahead
The path is a long one and littered with the dead
There is a lost world
Being reborn
It flickers like candlelight
Beyond the plains
An unmarked grave
Cradling a babe
In aqueducts of excrement
the seeds germinate
All the lights have dimmed
In their hive-like metropole
In their burning, swarming tumors
Buboes on the landscape
Lanced by disaster
Drained by catastrophe
The metastatic darkness
Spreading like cancer
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11. |
Hall of Mages
17:08
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Cresting the horizon
Beyond the hills of stone
Is hiding an enchanted,
Secluded hemlock grove
Nestled in the mountains
Where peaks are capped with snow
High above the threshold
Where roots refuse to grow
The fiefdom of the sovereign,
His vicars and sorcerers
A synod held by despots
Conspiring to control
Committing ink to paper,
Blood to seal their scrolls
Casting necromancies
To immiserate your soul
Masters of illusion
their grand designs take hold
Manipulate the cosmos
Allowing chaos to unfold
Endless divinations
To sate their every urge
Decreeing ruinations
Famines, blights and scourge
Spreading subjugation
Dominion without bounds
Serfdom for the conquered
Pastures scorched and brown
Communion with the heavens
A causal guarantee
Spirits having sundered
Perpetual drudgery
We are constantly
Under the condition
Of necessity
The illusion
Of our agency
Simulacra
Tangled in the web
Of temporal predation
Clamoring against the tide
In isolation
Struggling all alone
In vain desperation
To extricate yourself
From destruction
Thus I flail myself against
The stagnation
In the hope that I might still
One day emerge
With my sovereignty in tact
Thus my hope
Their iron grip be broken
And reversed
Un-tether me from its pull
The gravity
Preserve me from the taint
Of pernicious sorcery
Causality, necessity
Let go of me
Liberate me
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about
Since their inception, Cowardice have always leaned into teasing their individual boundary of metal. Slow and dirging, yet righteous and vigilant in its delivery. With every release, the evolution of Cowardice has never understated its ability to grow and branch into sensibilities that do not conform to the stalwart pillars of doom metal.
"Atavist" sees the band at their most daring of limits. Capitalizing on the dichotomy of melancholia and agonizing, churning, sludgy guitar work from the "Fealty" EP, "Atavist" pushes the basis further. A double-album in its entirety, "Atavist" challenges the listener to a one-and-a-half hour listen in its totality. In "Atavist's" first half, titled 'Suzerain,' Cowardice seeks a triumphant and glistening sonic bout of down-tuned metal. Through passages of gleaming slide guitar leads and hopeful clean vocalization dotted therein, 'Suzerain' slowly gives way to the darker latter half of the journey that is "Atavist." Transitioning out of 'Suzerain,' enters the second album comprised within "Atavist;" 'Sentinel." In its reigns of ultra-low tuned guitars, 'Sentinel' breaks the mold of 'Suzerain' and submerges the listener into the brutalizing woes of glacially slow paces of doom metal, intermingled with funereal harmonies meant only to deliver the listener deeper into the mire that is "Atavist." In cataclysmic fashion, 'Sentinel' finalizes the "Atavist" experience with its 17-minute closer, "Hall of Mages," which serves only to mangle those who take it on into despondency.
A challenge in itself, "Atavist" demands the willpower of its listener. It demands a sharpened attentiveness of those who refuse to tire. This record is for those who dare to challenge their understanding of hopefulness. To understand deceit, and blood, and betrayal, is to understand the statement "Atavist" strives to make. This is for the outcasts who reside on the fringes of society. For the frayed who have come to realize the bitter truth of it all; that these are our lives.
These are our lives.
"Atavist" sees the band at their most daring of limits. Capitalizing on the dichotomy of melancholia and agonizing, churning, sludgy guitar work from the "Fealty" EP, "Atavist" pushes the basis further. A double-album in its entirety, "Atavist" challenges the listener to a one-and-a-half hour listen in its totality. In "Atavist's" first half, titled 'Suzerain,' Cowardice seeks a triumphant and glistening sonic bout of down-tuned metal. Through passages of gleaming slide guitar leads and hopeful clean vocalization dotted therein, 'Suzerain' slowly gives way to the darker latter half of the journey that is "Atavist." Transitioning out of 'Suzerain,' enters the second album comprised within "Atavist;" 'Sentinel." In its reigns of ultra-low tuned guitars, 'Sentinel' breaks the mold of 'Suzerain' and submerges the listener into the brutalizing woes of glacially slow paces of doom metal, intermingled with funereal harmonies meant only to deliver the listener deeper into the mire that is "Atavist." In cataclysmic fashion, 'Sentinel' finalizes the "Atavist" experience with its 17-minute closer, "Hall of Mages," which serves only to mangle those who take it on into despondency.
A challenge in itself, "Atavist" demands the willpower of its listener. It demands a sharpened attentiveness of those who refuse to tire. This record is for those who dare to challenge their understanding of hopefulness. To understand deceit, and blood, and betrayal, is to understand the statement "Atavist" strives to make. This is for the outcasts who reside on the fringes of society. For the frayed who have come to realize the bitter truth of it all; that these are our lives.
These are our lives.
credits
released June 7, 2024
Music written and performed by:
Julian Cardazone
Nick Zwiren
Mark Guiliano
Chris Ward
Stephen Edwards
Recorded by Scot Moriarty at Backroom Studios
Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Redmount Studios
Front and back covers created by Adam Burke at Nightjar Illustration
"Atavist" is released in collaboration with Burning World Records (EU) and Riff Merchant Records (US)
Music written and performed by:
Julian Cardazone
Nick Zwiren
Mark Guiliano
Chris Ward
Stephen Edwards
Recorded by Scot Moriarty at Backroom Studios
Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Redmount Studios
Front and back covers created by Adam Burke at Nightjar Illustration
"Atavist" is released in collaboration with Burning World Records (EU) and Riff Merchant Records (US)
license
all rights reserved
tags
about
Cowardice New York, New York
Knaves wielding the power of guile. The harlequins of sonic despair.
discography
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Jun 2024
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Apr 2024
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Jun 2022
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May 2019
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Oct 2018
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Dec 2016
contact / help
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