Wanted...

"I've been doing this for ten years,” says the principal songwriter of his history in heavy music. “I've done a bunch of EPs, a bunch of demos – they were okay... I heard all the bands that I loved have all these awesome albums, and one thing in my life that I would regret doing is not doing something to the best that it possibly can be done. I decided to go all out, because it was going to give us the best chance for people to hear our music at the best possible production that it can be. That's the main reason. I just wanted to achieve a goal that I had.”

Gothenburg-based legend Fredrik Nordstrom, a man who helmed the desk for albums by At The Gates, Darkest Hour, In Flames and Bring Me The Horizon, was to be a key player in achieving that goal. The newly released Dead Or Alive was produced by the man himself across two Brisbane studios.

“I emailed him and called him a mad Swedish viking which got his attention,” Cosgrove laughs. “I basically said, 'Look mate we're interested, but are you interested in coming over?' and he said, 'Well, I am, but why don't you fly over here?' and he showed us the costs, which were massive. I think they were 666 Euro a day, which is like… a thousand Australian dollars. So I said, 'Why don't I fly you over?', and I flew his engineer, his missus and his three kids as well, and said 'I'll put you guys up if you charge us 500 Australian dollars a day, how about that?' and he just said, 'Yeah deal' and it saved us like twenty grand.”

The album's sound is massive and undeniably Nordstrom – how much influence did he end up having on the actual songs themselves?

“A lot,” is the quick reply. “I learned more in two weeks than I have in ten years in the music industry with that guy. Just how to structure songs. The riffs is the easy part, but it's putting the songs together that's really hard. He was involved for like three months before he came over going, 'Nope, that song's shit, do it like this: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, outro' kinda thing. He basically taught me to write my songs like pop songs with a little bit of spice added to it. It worked 99% of the time.”

Dead Or Alive's themes relate to its artwork, which features a zombie cowboy riding an equally as zombiefied horse. Cosgrove explains that the concept actually relates strongly to his country past in the rural town of Roma.

“I grew up on farms and stuff, and my grandfather passed away twelve months ago, and he was a massive stockman, and I grew up on country music as well. So I always wanted to do something that involves my life essentially – I got the boys in on the act as well, and they were pretty keen on the idea. What I wanted to do was represent that Western feel, but also the feel of where I'd come from, and as you could say in a paraphrased way, something that can die but it still exists. I come from the bush, but it'll always be a part of me.

“Mate I couldn't be more happy or proud,” says the axeman of the overall final product. “It's something that I'm really, really happy about. It's just opened up all sorts of doors for us, and if we keep the snowball rolling you never know. You just keep pushing.”