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The Cog Is Dead is essentially a steampunk band but an underlying theme of the band is their fictional back story. Each song is set with different steampunk themes and their ‘costumes’ are amazingly detailed.
As obvious the Steampunk genre influences the band heavily but The Cog Is dead also draws inspiration from
Russian Folk Music, Rock n’ Roll, Ragtime, Punk Rock, Reggae, Showtunes and Movie Scores combined, as well as others. Though each song varies they try to keep the energy, beauty and fun unified in each.
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The band was started in 2006 by John Mondelli, after reading the phrase ‘The Cog Is Dead’ randomly in the play “The Real Thing” and soon after applied the Steampunk theme along side it. They have released one album Steam Powered Stories (2010) with track titles such as 9self titled The Cog Is Dead, The Copper War, The Inventors Daughter and Mechanical Menagerie, among others.
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As noted in the introduction The Cog Is Dead is heavily influenced by their fictional back story. Their fictional back story is basically this: John Sprocket was disgusted was a simple clock maker, with a fond love of clockwork and cogs. When met with the news that a digital clock was being created he called on his good friend Sir Christofer Wolfe, in means to travel into the future to see if digital clocks were just a fad or a permanent change. They soon collected the help of the mechanic, Tony Seville and Joey the navigator and were on their way a hundred years into the future with their flying time machine. When met with the new ‘electric’ world they made it their mission to travel around the world and persuade people to change over to steam power, using their mechanical melodies and steam powered songs.
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The Cog Is Dead takes fashion inspiration from Steampunk (Duh) commiting themselves to mostly whites, creams, browns, blacks and brassy tones. Their outfits include waist coats, top hats, goggles, stop watches and the usual. Each instrument of the band goes under a steampunk transformation, created guitars covered in cogs and sprockets and even customized accordions, ukulele, banjo and kazoo.
The Cog Is Dead being a kickass Steampunk, time traveler, band from the 1800’s, what isn’t to love?
-Ms. Walrus.
The Walrus Room 
