Not true. Consent has nothing to do with cookies. If you look at what the ePrivacy Directive article 5.3. says, it's pretty clear:

"Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, ... "

So even Fathom, and other analytics tools that use browser fingerprinting or similar methods require consent.

And also, the whole no cookie, no consent -mantra does not respect user privacy. In some ways, browser fingerprinting is even worse because that's much harder for an average user to block than cookies.