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It took almost forty years to free the "prisoner" from the cage, to return to the scene of the crime and unleash the beast, along with its insane madness. It was 1971 when an obscure formation from Great Britain gave life to "First Utterance" (1971, Dawn), one of the darkest and most perverse albums in all of prog: fame did not smile upon the sextet who composed that masterpiece, but the magic of the internet will know how to cultivate the seeds sown by the band, unexpectedly bringing them back into the limelight.
It was 1970 when Roger Wootton, Glenn Goring, Andy Hellaby, Colin Pearson, Rob Young, and Bobbie Watson came together to create Comus: the intention of the six musicians was to create a sound that could immediately transport the listener into a well-defined setting, immersed in a medieval-like but, at the same time, dirty and sickly mood, surrounded by infernal litanies and morbid tribal rides. The secret of Comus's originality lay entirely in the innovative use of various unconventional instruments for a rock group, such as the oboe, the cello, and the tambourine, used with wisdom along with classical instruments and accompanied by Wootton's "delirious" voice contrasted with Watson’s sweet one. The name of the band, among other things, embodied 100% of their intentions, as the name Comus, in late antiquity, was associated with the semidivine personification of the "komos," an unrestrained ritual procession of revelry and intoxication, revived in modern times by John Milton for his masque.
"First Utterance" was an extremely innovative product for the era, perhaps too much, and commercial sales were indeed minimal: the time to compose "To Keep From Crying" (1974, Virgin) three years later with a slightly different formation, and the band definitively broke up. But as you know, time is a gentleman, and the advent of the internet will allow critics and new generations to bring Comus back from the oblivion into which they had sunk, enough to push the members of the historical formation to regroup in 2007 for a series of live performances in which they will revisit their historical repertoire.
In 2012, the turning point: Roger Wootton and company decide to return to the studio to bring forth "Out Of The Coma" (2012, Rise Above Records), a work that revisits the styles and themes of the legendary "First Utterance." From the title track, it is evident that we are facing an ideal follow-up to the band's first album, where the "prisoner," after a long sleep, slowly awakens from the coma in which he had self-imposed exile. Notably, in this instance, there's a sort of hypothetical parallel journey between the "prisoner" and the band itself, which slowly began to awaken from the long slumber to return to action. The three new tracks proposed by Comus perfectly encapsulate the ethos of "First Utterance": Roger Wootton drags us, with his piercing and tormented voice, into the dark and sick atmospheres represented by the first track and The Sacrifice, while The Return highlights the more romantic side (if it can be called that) of the band, with a ballad signed by the group's other vocalist, Bobbie Watson, who in the other tracks contrasts her sweet voice with Wootton's "nervous" one, creating a perfect and never annoying dualism. Of course, everything is orchestrated in a curated and inspired manner, in a perfect union between classic rock instruments and more classical sounding ones.
We are actually facing a sort of EP, considering that the new tracks are only 3 (for a total of 23 minutes), which will precede the listener to a historic documentation retrieved from the band's archives: we are talking about the "lost suite," the Malgaard Suite that was intended to be the successor to First Utterance but, at least in the studio, never saw the light of day. The recording, dated 1972 and recorded during a performance at Eynsford Village Hall, offers us Comus in their best form, in a long 16-minute demonic ride that knows no rest, among delirious lyrics and increasingly demonic rhythms; listening to the Malgaard Suite amplifies even more the regrets for a group that, with greater fortune, would undoubtedly have joined the Olympus of the Progressive Rock gods.
But maybe they are already there.
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