Customer Reviews

First Utterance

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I heard about Comus reading an interview with Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt. He has very interesting taste in some very obscure 70s bands, and mentioned Comus so I thought they might be good. I knew nothing about the band except that they took their name from a John Milton poem, and my only expectation (judging from the disfigured wretch on the cover) was that it would be a dark album. I never expected it to be so good. This is one of my "desert island albums" for sure, because of its unique sound and power.

How to describe it for someone who doesn't want to rush in blindly like myself? One critic described it as "a cross between a frenzied version of the witches chorus from Macbeth and Marc Bolan being squeezed to death." Ok. Well, at its core it is based in idioms of British folk music, but it is fusionized and rendered with a harsh, dissonant strikes with aliens bursting from the chest cavity. It can be rather heavy music -- not metal or hard rock heavy, but heavy in the atonal ferocity with which they are capable of attack their instruments with at times. I never thought acoustic instruments could sound so nasty. That raises another point: Comus' music is almost entirely acoustic -- acoustic guitar, electric bass, hand drums, flute, violin (and a little bit of electric guitar). This gives the album a very stark sound which adds to the genuineness of their doomy, dark fantasy world. The complex arrangements and rocking power of this band are tremendous. This band can rip it up like Gentle Giant or mystify with haunting musical landscapes like King Crimson (without sounding like either). The vocals run a remarkable gamut, from evil munchkin snarls to wispy female vocals to normal male singing.

Musically and lyrically, Comus evokes visions of pre-Christian pagan nature worship -- but this is starkly anti-Romanticist, dark, paranoid and vengeful. Just listen to the first song "Diana": goblin-like voices sing is a very credible hymn en masse to the eponymous goddess. The lyrics are twisted and sometimes violent. Some good examples: "Chastity chaser virile for the virgin's virtue | Excite her exciter you better go before you bleed and he hurts you | He chased the chaste you better leave if you value your virtue" from "Song to Comus"; "Your soft white flesh turns past me slaked with blood | Your evil eyes more damning than a demon's curse | Your lovely body soon caked with mud | As I carry you to your grave my arms your hearse" from "Drip Drip". (The attentive Opeth fan will notice that this is where Mikael Akerfeldt's took the name for Opeth's third album, which is easily one of their best albums too.)

The reason for Comus' obscurity is obvious. This is disturbing and weird music, but beneath the woe is a strange beauty, entrancing like a dark fairytale. Most people will aggressively dislike this, but on the other hand it may appeal to many different sorts: in general anyone interested in weird & dark music; Opeth fans (especially if you think _Damnation_ would sound good if it was less sad and just weirder, darker and more primitive); anti-symph prog fans might enjoy this too, and perhaps even the few 70s symph fans that are more inclined to weirdness and WYRDNESS; fans of very weird folk music; the uncommon fan of Scandanavian black metal who has a coterminous interest in dark folk music; and perhaps fans of the band Agalloch.

You will not find an album like Comus' _First Utterance_ anywhere. I suggest you check it out. Don't let the steep import price deter you, it's worth every penny. It's especially great if you listen to it in the forest at night with a full moon. Once you "get" it with maximum perspective, I think you will have to agree that it is one of the best albums to ever come from Britain.

If you couldn't tell from the cover, Comus' First Utterance album isn't a particularly sunny album. No--in fact, it's truly one of the darkest, scariest, most disturbing albums I've ever heard, in a way that makes me wonder "Who could actually think this up?" If you're put off by music with lyrics that graphically describe violence, madness, and rape, you'll probably be revolted and offended by First Utterance. If you don't mind separating yourself (and your idea of the songwriter) from the songs themselves, First Utterance is one of the most unique, fantastic, special, creative, and impressive albums you may ever hear. Even if you're of that persuasion (which I and many others are, it seems), the album is still a dark, taxing affair and has sort of a "car wreck" appeal--it's gruesome, but you can't help staring.

Comus' special blend of...er, progressive folk-rock(?) is immediately palpable as "Diana" makes itself known. Jerking violins and a mischievous bass line are underscored by a sinuous and creepy slide guitar part. The singing is another story--many members of the group sing, but the dominant voice is Roger Wooton's. Throughout the album, he stretches the possibilities of his voice to fascinating lengths (one of the most innovative elements of the album, not unlike Captain Beefheart, if more tuneful), including low groans, demonic falsetto, and some really interesting singing-while-chest-thumping. "Diana" quickly picks up speed, and the tension bursts into a tribal explosion of hand drums. It's one of the shortest, most accessible songs on the album, despite its vague lyrics that seem to forbode some hazy violence in the forest. "The Herald" eases the dangerous sounds prefigured by "Diana"--it's easily the most gorgeous cut on the album, with some dreamy flute, some really technically impressive fingerstyle guitar and vocals, as it languidly tells its story over 12 minutes.

Just when "The Herald" has lulled you into a false sense of peace, here comes "Drip Drip," a song about a murderer dragging his victim to her grave in the forest. As with "Diana," there's something morbidly, medievally British about this, and Comus manage to evoke the type of darkness and violence that must have been the reality of those days but hasn't been passed down with the cheery tales of Robin Hood etc. "Drip Drip" picks up where "Diana" left off, offering a portrait of the psyche of a killer. It is much more graphic, though, with some really gnarly grooves set up by slide guitar, violin and that urgent hand percussion. Echoing the jolting style changes of contemporaries like The Incredible String Band, around 7:00 the song busts into a spaced-out groove, before returning to form for a harrowing climax.

"Song To Comus" is pretty similar, about Comus, who bewitches virgins with his flute playing, lures them to his cave, then rapes them. With these themes, it's hard to believe that the whole band actually got behind the music. The evidence is before us, though, in its bizarre glory, and Wooton's hypnotic repetitions ("play play play play...") are doubled by ghostly female harmony. It all unfolds over surprisingly driving grooves and some pounding acoustic guitar. The album's final highlight is "The Prisoner," another character study--this time, a mental patient. Slightly lighter fair than all-out villains, but still a bit unsettling and tragic, as the narrator's wild creativity is violently put down by his doctors, under the pretense of helping him.

If you can stomach it, First Utterance is a brilliant album bristling with interesting musical ideas and fascinating (if insane) lyrics. The music here is definitely 5 stars, but this release, put out by Breathless, doesn't warrant 5 stars--about 7:00 into "The Herald" there are some quite audible sound defects (sounds like popping and scratching from old vinyl) that proceed a couple minutes into the next song. Not really acceptable, especially since I bought it brand new--it really cuts into some of the gorgeous guitar on "The Herald," and its' really distracts. If you're interested, I might suggest you try Song to Comus: The Complete Collection, which includes everything on this disc (even the 3 bonus tracks), as well as the entire belated 2nd album, which is supposed to be much less interesting than this one. I haven't gotten that one yet, but I'll comment on the sound quality as soon as I do.

Comus' _First Utterance_ is one of the creepiest, weirdest prog albums to ever come out of Britain, and also one of my favorites. It has only been available as a Japanese import for a long, long time, and you know how expensive those usually are. But finally it looks like it is available for a more competitive price. I encourage you to check it out.

Here is my review for the Japanese import, the musical content of which is the same. The import comes in one of those awesome mini-vinyl sleeve things (like the reissues of the King Crimson back catalogue up to _THRAK_); I don't know how this one is packaged, but hopefully it's cool, because an album like this deserves more than a cheap azz jewel case.

"I heard about Comus reading an interview with Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt. He has very interesting taste in some very obscure 70s bands, and mentioned Comus so I thought they might be good. I knew nothing about the band except that they took their name from a John Milton poem, and my only expectation (judging from the disfigured wretch on the cover) was that it would be a dark album. I never expected it to be so good. This is one of my "desert island albums" for sure, because of its unique sound and power.

"How to describe it for someone who doesn't want to rush in blindly like myself? One critic described it as "a cross between a frenzied version of the witches chorus from Macbeth and Marc Bolan being squeezed to death." Ok. Well, at its core it is based in idioms of British folk music, but it is fusionized and rendered with a harsh, dissonant strikes with aliens bursting from the chest cavity. It can be rather heavy music -- not metal or hard rock heavy, but heavy in the atonal ferocity with which they are capable of attack their instruments with at times. I never thought acoustic instruments could sound so nasty. That raises another point: Comus' music is almost entirely acoustic -- acoustic guitar, electric bass, hand drums, flute, violin (and a little bit of electric guitar). This gives the album a very stark sound which adds to the genuineness of their doomy, dark fantasy world. The complex arrangements and rocking power of this band are tremendous. This band can rip it up like Gentle Giant or mystify with haunting musical landscapes like King Crimson (without sounding like either). The vocals run a remarkable gamut, from evil munchkin snarls to wispy female vocals to normal male singing.

"Musically and lyrically, Comus evokes visions of pre-Christian pagan nature worship -- but this is starkly anti-Romanticist, dark, paranoid and vengeful. Just listen to the first song "Diana": goblin-like voices sing is a very credible hymn en masse to the eponymous goddess. The lyrics are twisted and sometimes violent. Some good examples: "Chastity chaser virile for the virgin's virtue | Excite her exciter you better go before you bleed and he hurts you | He chased the chaste you better leave if you value your virtue" from "Song to Comus"; "Your soft white flesh turns past me slaked with blood | Your evil eyes more damning than a demon's curse | Your lovely body soon caked with mud | As I carry you to your grave my arms your hearse" from "Drip Drip". (The attentive Opeth fan will notice that this is where Mikael Akerfeldt's took the name for Opeth's third album, which is easily one of their best albums too.)

"The reason for Comus' obscurity is obvious. This is disturbing and weird music, but beneath the woe is a strange beauty, entrancing like a dark fairytale. Most people will aggressively dislike this, but on the other hand it may appeal to many different sorts: in general anyone interested in weird & dark music; Opeth fans (especially if you think _Damnation_ would sound good if it was less sad and just weirder, darker and more primitive); anti-symph prog fans might enjoy this too, and perhaps even the few 70s symph fans that are more inclined to weirdness and WYRDNESS; fans of very weird folk music; the uncommon fan of Scandanavian black metal who has a coterminous interest in dark folk music; and perhaps fans of the band Agalloch.

"You will not find an album like Comus' _First Utterance_ anywhere. I suggest you check it out. Don't let the steep import price deter you, it's worth every penny. It's especially great if you listen to it in the forest at night with a full moon. Once you "get" it with maximum perspective, I think you will have to agree that it is one of the best albums to ever come from Britain."

I have nearly 5,000 albums and CDs. This is the one to take to the deserted island. It takes psychadelic folk to strange and glorious heights. The imagery created by the music is much more powerful than anything I've ever heard. Any fan of psyche-folk, wyrdfolk, and early 70s UK music already know of this essential monster. We spread the message and hopefully people are out there listening.

If there's any music in this chaotic world of ours' that's ever deserved the psychedelic label "trippy", Comus' 1970 debut "First Utterance" takes the cake. Comus is in a league of their own, and to this date, I have yet to hear any musical group sound anything relatively similiar to Comus' sound.

Roger Wooton's vocals are a distorted and frightening combination of evil, screeching munchkins and demented psychopathic screams, all wrapped up in a totally messed up package of dark, morbid beauty. The female vocals harmonize beautifully like angels in the heavens, the violin twists and writhes in chaotic, maniacal frenzies, and the acoustic guitars both rip up the scene and shine gorgeously better than any heavy-metal electric guitar ever could.

The opening song, "Diana", is the absolute pinnacle of "trippy" music, and the beautiful, soothing "The Herald" is the perfect kind of thing to listen to while gazing at the star-filled night sky. Evil, morbid beauties such as "Song to Comus" and especially "Drip, Drip" are as demented as they are gorgeous, and the closing "The Prisoner" should not be listened to alone in the dark; the abrupt stop in the ending mantra, "Insane! Insane! Insane!", scared me to death. ...In a damn good way, of course.

This may sound incredibly appealing to the 70's prog. movement/psychedelia fan, but Comus isn't a sound you can just suddenly jump into and enjoy. Since their music is so unique and different, it's an acquired taste, and one should be patient and allow it to grow on him/her. Of course, in the end, "First Utterance" is worth every penny it costs. I highly recommend "First Utterance" to anyone looking for something completely different and unique. I guarrantee you won't hear anything like this anywhere else.

In 1971, when hippies still roamed the earth , many strange records were made, and none stranger than this one. It's a complete one-off. Where to begin. Shall I describe it as an acoustic death metal album? Could be. It's not so much a piece of music as a pagan ritual involving some kind of sacrifice, and Comus are not a band, they're a very small cult. One thing which is sacrificed from the get-go is traditional song structures. Like the Incredible String Band, these melodies stretch out, meander, get lost, find themselves again, always surprising the listener with sudden flights of beauty as the two gorgeous high choirgirl female voices twine together creating lovely dreams which get pulverised by the guy with the goat-like bellow, a dead ringer for Roger Chapman (from Family, a contemporary band) and also strangely called Roger (Wootton).
The album creates its own unique style with acoustic guitars, violin, flute, percussion (as opposed to drums), and its two opposing male female ugly/beautiful lustful/chaste voices. It's demented, exciting, disturbing and really creepy, and very compelling, and it couldn't be sustained at this pitch - when they were allowed to make their second album, a couple of years later, the magic had completely vanished and they were just another second-rate folk band.
In 1971 Comus were completely ignored, and understandably so - too nasty and weird for folkies, too acoustic for anyone else. But great music will always survive, and so Comus crawls like an unstoppable cockroach back to the surface.
This record is for the adventurous.

This album is about 25 years ahead of its time if not more. In fact, I can't really think of any band that is really similar to Comus. Until today, I had no idea that Comus was from the early 1970s... I just knew that they made some bizarre and insane sounds.

First, album cover. Really cool looking. Buy the LP just so you can frame it and throw it on your wall, then stare at for about 20 minutes.

Next, put the record on. It sounds like nothing else. Insane acoustic music, with vocals that sometimes sound like Fairport Convention and sometimes sound like Devin Townsend. I can't really pick apart the lyrics, but apparently they are about insanity, rape, violence, and whatever else. Pretty crazy for a band of that time. No flower power folk here.

After that, the songs, well I don't know if I am going to call them songs... all blend together to form the album. Many songs go through so many changes that it seems as if they are different songs within the same track. So at the end of the day, the songs don't really matter, only the album does.

Finally, listen to this when you are not on substances and you will feel like you are... listen to this on drugs and you will feel like you are Comus.

That is all. Buy this album and tell your friends and rich relatives to buy multiple copies.

You bet it is! Comus was a British folk-rock/prog band that only released two albums, this one in 1971 on the Dawn label, and To Keep From Crying in 1974 on Virgin (with the help of Gong and Henry Cow members, if I'm not mistakened, I know Lindsay Cooper guested on that album). The review is obviously for First Utterance, so I'll focus on that. The album was released at the beginning of 1971 during a time where there was allegedly a post office strike in the UK, making it difficult for the album to hit the stores. The rock critics were less than kind to this album, but then the music was obviously way over their heads. Often one might get the impression Comus would be not unlike Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span if they never heard the album. But of course, neither group ever created music this sinister sounding, or with extended passages that are sometimes rather experimental or unconventional. Neither did Comus touch on centuries old British Isles folk or Celtic folk jigs and reels. Everything you hear on First Utterance are all originals. The vocals are completely demented. At times Roger Wootton would bring to mind Roger Chapman of Family, and there are even times his voice reminds me of Jerry Samuels (Napoleon XIV) when his voice is speed up high. The band also featured female vocalist Bobbie Watson, guitarist Glen Goring, bassist Andy Hellaby, violinst Colin Pearson, and flautist Rob Young. Most of the band members were also credited to playing hand drums (no traditional rock drums here). "Diana" shows what this album is all about: twisted lyrics, twisted vocals, and just all-around unpredictability. "The Herald" is one of the more mellow pieces here. Bobbie Watson is the dominant vocalist here, and for some reason this cut reminds me of the female vocals I hear on a Hatfield & the North album. Of course, this isn't Canterbury, but I could almost imagine Barbara Gaskin, Ann Rosenthal, and Amanda Parsons doing the vocals for that song, even though it was just Bobbie Watson. After the female vocals are done, is an extended use of acoustic guitar. Really nice, pleasant, and laid back. Then you get the wonderful "Drip Drip", the second longest song after "The Herald". This is truly one of those pieces you can call prog rock. Certainly not prog rock in the Yes and Genesis variety, but the song is stuffed with lots of extended and creative passages certainly to keep progheads happy. "Song to Comus" is another of the album's high points, maybe a little more straightforward than the previous two cuts, but I just love the flute and violin work. This song most reminds me of Family, no doubt helped by Roger Wootton's voice, who does his best Roger Chapman here. "Bite" is a shorter piece continuing on the greatness of "Song to Comus", more nice violin and flute work. "Bitten" is the album's only instrumental piece, it is rather experimental and twisted. It reminds me of what many of the Krautrock groups were doing around the same time. This is perhaps the least "musical" piece on the album. Then you get "The Prisoner" which closes the album. It starts off rather soft, then it gets more aggressive, with more twisted and demented vocals. This album is so full of high points it's really hard picking just one. I always enjoy getting these obscure and unknown albums and being amazed in the process like First Utterance. Truly a must-have album for those looking for the obscure and off-the-wall!

this album, recorded at the end of 1970, grows on me with each listen. avante-garde prog-folk-rock, call it what you will. at times when listening to this i imagined that this is what frank zappa (circa "hot rats") would have sounded like if he had made celtic folk-rock. acoustic guitars (6 & 12 string), electric guitar, slide guitar, bass, slide bass, violin, viola, flute, oboe, drums and other miscellaneous percussion all appear on this recording, creating plenty of moods, various degrees of noise, and a variety of texture. fans of "the incredible string band" should find much to love here. 3 bonus tracks from a 1971 EP are tacked on at the end, and that's good and fine, as well. all in all, a wonderfully strange recording that i recommend to the adventurous.

I am amazed to find out that First Utterance is available on CD. In 1971 / 1972 I was a devoted Comus fan and saw them about three or four times around Ealing and West London. I remember seeing them at Ealing Town Hall and apart from me and my boyfriend there were only a handful of other people. For years I have lamented the fact that I no longer had the LP not realising that it had been re-issued on CD.
I could never understand why they did not make a bigger impact and seemed to vanish, so to read that there are still people around over 30 years later who really appreciate their music is wonderful.
Susanna