FIRST UTTERANCE

This album is just plain insane, but in the best way it could be ! I was introduced to this band when I was searching for some dark music. I've read some reviews here and they got me to really want to hear this album, because it seemed perfect for me. After some intense search, I finally got my hands on this record, like four weeks later. Since then, my life changed, really.So here's my take on this fabulous mind-bending insanity demonstration that is Comus's First Utterance.

The album starts off with Diana, a dark, trippy and incredibly powerful introduction to the world of Roger Wooton. His singing is not usual, but I love it, it's like he's transmitting his "insanity" to our ears, he really feels the music. It is like if he said at the beginning, welcome to MY world. The lyrics are, like the other reviewers said, disturbing, but incredibly well written, I personally think that they're genius ! The music of this song is really psychedelic, but dark psychedelic ! Awesome song.

Comes after the beautiful song The Herald. The vocals on this song are.... well.... beautifully haunting, they are sung by Bobbie Watson in a very beautiful high-pitched voice. The song is long, with lenghty acoustic passage. This song gives the impression of being on the side of a lake in the middle of a gloomy forest, watching a floating white- clothed female singing. All that to say that this song is achingly beautiful, mellow and quite haunting for all it's 12 minutes, full of great acousitic guitar work.

The third song is my favorite, but many will find it way too disturbing. Drip Drip tells about a forest brutal murder in words just enough explicit. This is really disturbing, but I respect this for that. This is genius, wicked and sick genius. The music on that song is really insane, I mean this is going with the music. The instrumental parts are very well played and are quite inventive, when the song come back, it's incredibly twisted, with lyrics like : "Yea, Shall I cut you down ? Yea 'Twould be our last physical comunion, I'll be gentle, I'll be gentle..." This is really crazy, and he sings this in a voice that shows crazyness, I mean, this is scary. All in all, this is a crazy song, insanely genius.

Song to Comus is the fourth song, and is generally considered as the highlight of the album. The lyrics are really freaking me out ! For me, they're even more disturbing than those of Drip Drip. But again, they are perfectly executed, like the music. This song is a real gem! For me this is only slightly behing Drip Drip, because it last less long and don't have that sort of psy-flolk instrumental freak-out that gets me in Drip Drip. This is indeed awesome too !

The Bite and Bitten goes together. In my humble opinion, The Bite is the least good song of the album. Lyrically, it deals with Christianity, as always it's sort of disturbing, but not the same way that the other songs. It's still a very good song, and the instrumental Bitten represent one of the scariest and intense 2 minutes I've ever heard. A great Halloween song !

The album ends with The Prisoner, a song about insanity, and the asylum(a place that Roger Wootton is familiar, I think). This song is a great ending. It's going upward in intensity as it reaches the end, an extraordinary end : Roger "singing" insane again and again, backed by Bobbie Watson. Another gem in this album.

Finally, I would say that this album is truly a masterpiece. A twisted chef-d'oeuvre coming from an insane mind. This is timeless. Disturbing, but incredibly good.

Extremly Recommended(if you dare...), this is no easy-listening. 9.8/10 !