COG – Walk The Line tour
with Solkyri + Penrose Way, Odeon Theatre, 17th April 2026
The first real bite of winter in Hobart – that sharp, needling cold that gets under your coat and stays there. But inside the Odeon on a Friday night it was a different climate entirely. I walked in carrying the cold with me. But ended up feeling like I’d been set alight; packed venue, strobe lights and heat radiating off those scratchy fisherman-type sweaters everyone wears around here.
COG, with support from Solkyri and Penrose Way, turned the room into something dense and electric.
Penrose Way hailing from Townsville, QLD opened the night with a grounded, steady presence, a set that felt like a great catalyst for a fiery night. Not explosive, but…you could see and feel the crowd beginning to gather itself. For a four-piece emerging band of the heavier prog-rock variety – they sounded tight and enjoyable to watch. Their new single Echoesdropped at the start of April and it is definitely worth checking out.
Before the voltage spiked, Solkyri laid the groundwork. A band from Sydney that has been around for nearly two decades. A sort of ethereal post-rock quartet sprinkled with a bunch of reverb, that definitely earned attention by layering texture over rhythm until the room felt suspended in it.
Their set moved like weather systems; swelling, collapsing, rebuilding. The crowd seemed a bit mellow, however the band played their set beautifully, accompanied by some really atmospheric lighting. Their latest EP Cranebrook struck a chord with me and I would recommend starting there…if instrumental post-rock is your thing.
By the time COG were ready to hit the stage, the dance floor was absolutely packed and I made my way up to the upper balcony to enjoy the rest of the show with a better view.
Bondi Beach three-piece formed in 1998 and have been a vital part of the Australian Rock scene for nearly three decades. Fronted by Flynn Gower and expanded by the drummer-extraordinaire Lucius Borich and bassist Luke Gower, (yes, Flynn’s brother).
Touring their Walk The Line run, the band arrived with the kind of precision that only settles over time. Over 25 years of playing together distilled into something lean and intentional. That longevity isn’t worn like nostalgia. It shows up in instinct. In how they lock into each other without looking. In the confidence to strip things back and still hit harder.
COG opened with Doors (Now and Then My Life Feels Like It’s Going Nowhere) which felt less like a song, and more like an opening statement. From the first note, the lighting rig snapped into action; harsh strobes cutting the room into fragments, turning bodies into silhouettes, rhythm into something almost visual. Smart move incorporating lighting into a set like COG’s.
This wasn’t a loose, jam-heavy set. It was tight. Surgical. Every transition locked in. Tracks like Are You Interested? and What If hit with a kind of muscular clarity…no excess, no drift. Across this tour, reviews from Sydney and Melbourne have pointed to the same thing – a band operating with renewed discipline. Less sprawling than their earlier years, more deliberate. Hobart got that version too – refined, but no less intense.
By the time they dropped into The Middle and Drawn Together the room had shifted. Heads weren’t just nodding, they were syncing. COG have always played with repetition, here it felt hypnotic rather than indulgent. Silence Is Violence and The Spine leaned into that darker, more political edge, the kind of tracks that don’t just sit in your ears, they sit in your chest. The strobes intensified here, almost confrontational. You didn’t just watch the band. You endured them, in the best way.
Closing trifecta Run, My Enemy and Bird of Feather... This is where the set loosened just enough to breathe. Not softer, never soft, but expansive. My Enemy in particular landed with a kind of bruised clarity, the crowd fully inside it now, voices rising just enough to blur the line between stage and floor. Bird of Feather closed the night with a controlled burn. The kind that lingers. No encore. Perfect set. COG aren’t chasing their past. They’ve trimmed it, sharpened it, and re-presented it with intent, something that only really works when a band has this kind of shared history behind them.
COG at the Odeon was high-charged, yes. Stroby, relentless, precise. Same songs across the whole tour, meticulously practiced with no room for error. But underneath all of that was something quieter and more dangerous; control earned over 25 years of playing side by side. Not chaos. Not nostalgia. Control.
This article first appeared in Heavy Mag. Reproduced here with permission of the writer and photographer.
