Comus rape, Comus break, sweet young virgin's virtue take!

It's always a pleasant surprise when the most interesting and experimental bands you can find were actually active 40 years ago. Such was the case when I stumbled upon Comus roughly over a year ago. A tragically short lived and largely-membered group of musicians from the UK who released one of the most "out-there" albums of the early (early early) 70's, First Utterance. Seriously, it is difficult to conceive that must like this was released in 1971, and even harder to imagine it was conceived 2-3 years before that. HOLY SHIT.



It's sort of hard to describe, but imagine a group of medieval minstrels on LSD on acid playing some sort of proto-freak folk (in the sense that this is freaky and it is folky, not in the sense it's that made-up genre people sometimes label Animal Collective as.) Thematically, the song varies in themes from rape to more rape to torture to rape and torture (to the oddly out-of-place celestially-themed prog-rock wankery of "The Herald", which is probably a metaphor for rape (i.e. "flutes", etc.)

None of this would really be half as interesting as it is if it weren't for Roger Wootton vocal style, which ranges from yelping to screaming to warbling to sometimes actual singing; definitely download "Song to Comus" to see what I mean, because it really makes the songs extra-special. EXTRA SPECIAL.

Most exciting of all and most extra special is that the band recently announced a goddamn reunion after a 35-ish year split. I will donate any part of my body (you hear that, Comus? Any part.) for a Toronto date. Please.

Comus - Diana
Comus - Song to Comus

Comments are always appreciated. Tell me what you like, what you don't, want you want more or less of, or send me some recommendations or anything. And if you wanna link to me, I'll link to you. No homo.