Music review: Comus - First Utterance (1971)

NB: this is more specifically about the very much needed '95 remaster by BGO.

First of the two folk albums in my list. A genre I really don't like when taken as a whole (too much text-focused slop for tasteless hippies) but with a few obscure pearls within the progressive and neofolk offshoots.

Instrumentally, it's often close to Jethro Tull with a lot of twisted atmosphere mixed in. But vocally, well… this is different. Manic, powerful, trance-like and wildly changing, something I'd find at home in a witch coven or amongst Cthulhu cultists reveling deep inside the Louisiana bayou.

If you've read a few of my reviews, you'll know how much I love it when music manages to be this visually evocative. If I have to find a nitpick… Well, a few years back, I would have grumbled about "The Herald" and its length, but nowadays I think it's just fine. Same for the "Bitten" interlude, it's there for a reason.

My conclusion is simple: pure unfiltered genius, no filler so to speak, never equaled in its small world of dark psychedelic folk. But - yes there's a "but" - it's an album you must intently listen to, resonate with and lose yourself in to fully get it, a bit like Magma's legendary Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh. This and a vague je ne sais quoi made me hesitate between 9 and 10, but nah, it deserves it.