FIRST UTTERANCE

The first song, "Diana" (4:37), dedicated to the goddess of hunting, determines the sound and mood of the album: acoustic sound with guitar, clear sound, violin, percussion and bass in the foreground but not drums with the snare, female choirs and a more cavernous male voice... the mood is demonic, hallucinatory folk music with tribal rhythms, which evoke primitive pagan rites, as described by the cover and the lyrics: The song is original, 8+.

The mini-suite "The Herald" (12:12), perhaps the most important piece of the Lp, it starts as psychedelic folk, acid-folk, with female voices you do not know if demonic or angelic, after 3'40'' the song fades and then starts again with guitar arpeggio, then violin that becomes melancholy and poignant, beautiful melody (great work by Colin Pearson), then about 9'40'' that is after 6 minutes from the pause, it starts the initial entries again. The structure is verse - chorus (of higher hue), then central instrumental piece, then again verse - chorus. Rating 8,5.

"Drip Drip" (10:54) begins with a beautiful acoustic guitar arpeggio, but soon the track becomes dissonant, high-pitched lyiser singing, Wootton sings almost as Roger Chapman, and the listening becomes difficult, the percussions that in the previous piece were not there, here are very important and at about 6'30', after a very dissonant piece, it changes the melody, comes the percussion, the melody remains in the background and is stretched, deformed, the music comes to parorosism. Rating 7.5/8.

End of Side A.

The fourth piece, "Song To Comus (7:30), proceeds with the distorted paroxysmal climate of the previous one, the song resembles that of Jethro Tull, it is interesting as Comus manage to combine the melody with this hallucinatory paroxysmal mood that at times seems almost demented, and one wonders how long they can keep this inspiration so cohesive and obsessively centered on this hallucinatory atmosphere. Rating 8.

"The Bite (5:26)" is very fast, the rhythm is sustained, and again we listen to the continuum of the same pagan poem, dark mood, demonic sound. Rating 8. 6. Bitten (2:15) is an instrumental piece, acoustic, whose atmosphere is terrible and frightening, and it is a good idea to put a break, a short instrumental piece after songs so similar. Rating 8.

The last piece, "The Prisoner" (6:14), begins at a rhythm, similar to Diana, percussion, female voices, Wootton's hoarse voice, the music is so homogeneous with the previous ones that it adds nothing in terms of musical material, and closes an album all too granite, dense, almost monotonous as the Comus have eviscerated their musical material in a capillary way and the album ends with the pastoral, acidic, folk, hallucinatory psychedelic obsession that crystallized the album. Rating 7,5.

it is a masterpiece of inspiration and especially of intensity rather than broad views because it focuses on a single style, a single mood, a single sound, a single atmosphere developed very well, but at the same time this intensity crystallized on a single atmosphere also determines the limit of the LP, which certainly falls into what I consider real masterpieces but not in the absolute masterpieces of (prog) rock.

Medium quality of the songs: 8. Rating 9+, Five Stars.