Search - Comets on Fire :: Avatar (Dig)

A Modern Throwback to early Progressive Rock

Dano | New Jersey USA | 08/24/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This group has assimilated all the influences of great rock music from 1967 to 1972 and come up with a modern vision.Everyone from Frank Zappa to Quicksilver Messenger Service to Morgen to Guess Who to Procol Harum to Yes(plus hundreds of others) are touched upon by this eclectic recording then stretched to an almost Jazzlike sound.I call it pure genius and if any of the above mentioned bands are your idea of great music then I highly recommend this and all their other recordings.Too bad there's no other bands mining this territory, but I'm sure glad these guys are!"

The Rock Gods Smile

D. C. Ober | Boston, MA | 08/31/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you play this CD in reverse it says "Jesus is Satan."



Comets on Fire are dense. Blue Cathedral was a punishing wall of noise. Listening to it I felt like one of those explorers in the black and white Tarzan movies equipped with a machete inching through the foliage. However, once you carved out your own path the album rewarded you tenfold. Comets are unapologetically classic rock, but instead of just breaking out the old Hendrix and painting by numbers they added some proto-punk and an echoplex.



Some thought Blue Cathedral was more attitude than it was songwriting, and to them Avatar is the perfect rebuttal. Here the Faces riffs and Robert Plant vocals are slowed down to further reveal the songs to the point where someone who hated Blue Cathedral might actually like Avatar. Don't worry, there's still use of the echoplex, and the songs are drawn from six to eight minutes in length (with one exception), but Comets have traded in some of their feral energy for a more dynamic sound.



Benefiting the most from the new dynamics is the bad acid sounding "Lucifer's Memory," a song that sounds like a flower wilting. There's a certain cadence that plugs along with the chugging vocals pushing the song towards its seven minute mark. It has quickly become my favorite new song of this year.



While there are still some rockers, such as the opener "Dogwood Rust" which sounds as if its beginning should be found somewhere before you pressed play, just as the closer sounds as if it ends before the song has stopped, even these rockers sound less brutal than their predecessors. Only "Holy Teeth" has the same long-haired head banging attitude as Blue Cathedral, and it only lasts three minutes (only a minute in Comets on Fire time).



At almost nine-minutes "Soup Smoke" pushes the limits of pseudo-tribal beats. Instead of punishing noise Comets are pounding repetition into our heads. Just thirteen more seconds and I think I would have had a spiritual vision.



At only six minutes long the closer "Hatched Upon the Age" proves that it takes more than just length to be epic and more than just noise for a crescendo. The miracle of the album is that through all of the interplay between the instruments sometimes it's just a couple of simple repetitive piano keys to bring it all home.



Avatar is easily one of the best releases of '06. Very few bands can bring me back to that feeling I got discovering classic rock bands in middle school. But don't break out your eight tracks and dust off the old bong yet. Unlike most bands, retro is only half of the story for Comets on Fire. Comets on Fire are ultimately timeless. Try as I might, I cannot lump them with all the other seventies rockers, but their sound hardly seems contemporary. It's as if they've found some time wormhole so they can rock on across the ages. I'm there, man, I'm there."

Avatar Review from [...]

P. Kaufman | 09/26/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Upon inception in 1999, Santa Cruz's Comets on Fire were wise in their choice of band name because their sound does hit first-time listeners with the force of an errant and blazing meteor falling from out of nowhere. Back with their fourth official album as well as their second with the addition of guitarist Ben Chasny, the brainchild of psych/drone rockers Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire have chosen a road less traveled in their career yet haven't lost their wavering psychedelic touch. Whereas their previous release, 2004's Blue Cathedral, was awash with raw noise and feedback and a thick dose of proto punk cut from the cloth of the Stooges and MC5, Avatar is more toned-down in terms of noise, with more of an emphasis on the always swooping guitar of front man Ethan Miller (not to mention his ashtray like voice) along with woozy psych jams sounding like they came from an old live Fillmore recording of Country Joe and the Fish or Jefferson Airplane.







Even as the chill mode is the path taken on "Jaybird," drummer Utrillo Kushner keeps apace with an intensely rapid flow of a be-bop scat-shot percussion groove that also remains tepid. With plenty of half-buried and squelching organ lines and a rustic overtone, it would be a topic of great debate to say that Comets on Fire veer off into an improv mode, but their free jazz approach is undeniable. The organ and keyboard elements are more audible here than they have ever been with Comets on Fire, especially with the druggy lounge blues of "Lucifer's Memory."







Being the mélange of intoxicating mind sets that it is, Avatar is like a sponge of sorts that is absorbed in a mixture of PBR pounders, potent cannabis, and Orange Sunshine LSD. The album also exhibits some of the flourishes of Six Organs of Admittance and Miller's side project Howlin' Rain. Overall, Avatar is a kaleidoscopically gritty effort that contains the sound and vision of an acid test party ethos and a belligerent dram of punk rock defiance. - Chris Pacifico







For more cd reviews and information on Comets on Fire visit [...]"