Review Summary: Comus are still crazy.
Revived more or less entirely at the behest of
Opeth’s mastermind, this frantic psychedelic folk rock group has ascended some 40 odd years later with what
should have been their sophomore effort in place of the truthfully quite disappointing follow up to
First Utterance, an album most certainly worthy of the title legendary within the psychedelic music scene. Evocatively, the album cover portrays a scrawny body reminiscent of an obsolete era. And what has changed since the release of the praised debut album in 1971? Not an awful lot really.
Out Of the Coma is not at all very unlike its eclectic predecessor, delivering a frenzied execution of the same intriguing acoustic acid rock formula that clearly distinguished the debut from anything that was going on in the music scene almost half a century back in time.
An honestly quite stingy twenty minute effort of entirely new music might seem a bit cheap, coming from a band of such status. But what you get is unmistakably
Comus – and of surprisingly high quality. We live in an age where bands that live off of former glories are frowned upon and what we have here is not a case of such antics. The music displays a familiar dark and psychotic affair that gets away with lacking originality by featuring some of the bands finest moments in its unfortunately much too short lived career (which revival we should all be happily embracing!). The album also has within a small treasure, of sorts. Introduced by lead guitarist and vocalist
Roger Wooton we are made familiar with the first suite of a never before heard track from the band’s past, in which a distressing and beautifully haunting atmosphere displays what was supposed to have been its true follow up to the debut. “Time and neglect has not been kind to the original cassette”,
Wooton excuses in the audio recording and continues by saying that the audio is not good, a painful truth that unfortunately hinders a fully enjoying listening experience when the album has reached its final note. Despite the fact that it sounds like what it just is – an old bootleg recording from 1972 of the band performing it live in an old university; its haunting atmosphere seemingly leaks through the low standard production and serves almost just as pleasant as the rest of the album.
Casting an aura of unmistakably familiar agitation and (in all honesty) utter madness, the product of this revived band brings nothing new to the table, but definitely makes up for what it should have been bringing us four decades ago.
