COH - My World: Anger, Orgasm and the Height of Hatred: After 40 home recorded, DIY cassette releases and as many line-up changes, genre leaps and near death experiences, the band found themselves carving out their swan song - a culmination of a decade of songwriting and performing - in a couple weekends at Dayton, Ohio’s legendary Cro-Magnon Studios - owned by Producer/Engineer John Shough. The enormous, cavern of a room at Front Street Warehouse has also played host to Guided By Voices, The Breeders, Decay, Shrug and a host of other Dayton stalwarts. The band brought in an entourage of friends and family and set up camp in the room, members of punk band, The Stoics providing backing vocals along with the band’s friends, wives, girlfriends and siblings.
Early COH runs the gamut from lo-fi, no drums, guitar and vocals punk to full on techno and acid house, hippie proselytizing and weird german goth sounds though most of the songs for “My World” were written in the late 80’s and very early 90’s and showcase the band’s ascent/descent into a fullbore spooky rock act. The songs origins predate the “grunge explosion” though their dirty, sludgy, 3 chord Sabbath meets the Dead Boys or Misfits/Motorhead/Melvins fetishizing certainly fit the era and the band was heavily influenced by Nirvana, The Melvins, Tad, early Soundgarden, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Coffin Break and so many other great bands of that era. The band billed themselves as “Ugly Sludge Punk” and “Punk/Metal/Murder Rock Gods” and were certainly angrier, darker and more aggressive than most of the grunge era bands. The band also pulled heavily from a denim and leather, metal studded past - influenced by bands like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, early Metallica, Anthrax, Testament, Slayer, Megadeth, Venom, Celtic Frost, Bathory, Dark Throne as well as classic proto-metal like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Mountain and punks like Dead Kennedys, The Exploited, The Crucifucks, The Misfits, Fear, Black Flag and Crass.
The band would later add guitarist Greg Noble (The Stoics, Queen Wasp, Nightbreed, Sedation Generation) and recorded an EP at Bowling Green University that was never released. The band succumbed to lifestyle changes and other opportunities. The band’s sole founding member, guitarist and lead singer, Chad Wells left the band to form The Jackalopes with then Migraines member (former member of Drained, Sourbelly, Tim, Haunting Souls and Love Lies Bleeding and future member of The Story Changes and Legbone) George “GeeGee” Bradley.