Tag: Comacozer

Top 30 albums of 2019: #’s 20 – 16

We’re into the top 20 albums from the year that I heard and reviewed. Let’s do this.

#20 – Blackwater Holylight – Veils of Winter

Blending goth, psychedelia, and doom, Blackwater Holylight crafted one of the coolest and creepiest records of the year. Witches coven vocal harmonies and cosmic horror synths roll along like fog across a moor and draw you into what at first sounds like the end of your mortal coil but turns out to be a pretty neat party.

#19 – Khruangbin – Hasta El Cielo

Khruangbin’s Con Todo El Mundo was already amazing, but then they released this dub version of it, and it’s just as good. It’s richly layered and probably the best chill-out record of 2019.

#18 – Comacozer – Mydriasis

Be sure to check out these guys if you’re a fan of dwarf star matter-heavy stoner metal. Comacozer’s Mydriasis consists of only four tracks, but they add up to enough time for a full album. They take delight in exploring long jams, cosmic highways, and hanging out with ancient gods.

#17 – King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Infest the Rats’ Nest

Speaking of heavy, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard decided to release two albums this year. The first was Fishing for Fishies (#26 on this list), and the second was this thrash metal album. Like “Fishies,” it’s also heavy on environmental themes and even heavier on shredding. They pretty much did it as a lark and it ended up being one of the best metal albums of the year.

#16 – Chromatics – Closer to Gray

Everyone was expecting the long-awaited (and long since destroyed) Dear Tommy, but we got Closer to Gray instead. It’s pretty much a giallo film soundtrack with plenty of sexy synthwave, Ruth Radelet’s haunting vocals, and a stunning cover of “The Sounds of Silence.”

The top 15 are coming up later today. Stick around!

Keep your mind open.

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Review: Comacozer – Mydriasis

If you’re starting a band and wondering how many songs you would need on your album to take the listener on a mind-altering journey of fuzzed guitars, reverb-drenched bass, and asteroid belt heavy drums, Australia’s Comacozer have answered the question for you: Three.  You would need three songs.

Granted, they are going to last anywhere from eleven to twenty minutes each, and you will have to rock them as heavily as Comacozer do, so good luck.

The opening title track to Comacozer‘s solid new album, Mydriasis (the medical term for dilation of the pupil), opens your third eye as it drops you down a rabbit hole of face melting psych rock with little bits of doom metal sprinkled on top for good measure.  The guitar work on the track by Rick Burke is particularly jaw-dropping, sliding effortlessly back and forth between psychedelic jams and battle axe-heavy riffs.

“Tryptamine” starts with what sounds like a monologue by Rod Serling, which is appropriate considering the mind-warping nature of the track’s synths by James Heyligers.  These synths sneak around the entire track while Andrew Panagopoulos keeps the band (and us) from drifting out of this reality by maintaining a solid, gravity-induced beat.

I love how Richard Elliott’s opening bass line on “Kykenon Journey” is almost a sinister funk-disco lick.  It promises groovy things to come, and the track certainly delivers.  Kykenon, for those of you unaware, is a water and barley beverage that was popular among the lower class in ancient Greece.  It was often mixed with other spices and compounds that gave it a psychoactive kick, much like Panagopolous’ beats and Burke’s riffs.  The song (which takes up the entire second side of the EP, by the way) is a fine rocker for the first five minutes and then switches to an even finer psychedelic trip.  It’s the kind of stuff that will make you convinced the goop in your lava lamp is dancing to it. Seriously, don’t stare at your lava lamp for too long while listening to this.  It might check you out of reality without you realizing it.

It’s a solid EP of mind-warping psychedelia from Down Under.  I hope these guys can do a tour of the U.S. soon.  It would be great to hear these epic instrumentals live.

Keep your mind open.

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Comacozer / Blown Out – In Search of Highs Volume 1

Australian cosmic psych-rockers Comacozer have teamed up with UK cosmic psych-rockers Blown Out to release a massive split LP of, you guessed it, cosmic psych-rock called In Search of Highs Volume 1.

“Massive” might be too light of an adjective to describe this record.  Comacozer‘s portion is on side A.  It’s one track that last’s just short of eighteen minutes.  “Binbeal” begins with a didgeridoo to put us in the mood of someone sitting atop a red rock in the Australian outback during a sunrise meditation.  It evolves into a heady groove perfect for opening your third eye chakra.  It’s a rapid plunge down a psychedelic rabbit hole by the eleventh minute.

Blown Out gets side B off to an epic start with the nine-minute-plus “Terraform.”  The title of the track refers to the process of restructuring entire planets.  Trust me, it’s heavy enough to do that.  The guitars alone would power terraforming machines from orbit.  “Void Sucker” is half the length of the previous track, but about double the speed.  “Hook Up the Telepath” ends side B with psychedelic chaos that reminds me of the aerobraking scene in 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

It’s a solid LP of instrumental stoner-psych metal that will get you through the cold of space or the heat of re-entry.  Volume 2 can’t come soon enough for my liking.

Keep your mind open.

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Comacozer – Kalos Eidos Skopeo

Australian psych / stoner rock powerhouse Comacozer have returned with another instrumental freakout – Kalos Eidos Skopeo.  The name of the album, of course, is a play on the words “kaleidoscope” or “kaleidoscopic,” suggesting that the music can be viewed / interpreted many different ways at once.

Take the opener, “Axis Mundi” (the cosmic / world axis), for example.  It begins with squawking guitars that sound like something from a slasher film soundtrack, but the track becomes almost a meditative piece by the time it reaches the five-minute mark thanks to skillful use of guitar reverb and subtle yet precise drumming.

“Nystagmus” might bring on its namesake (involuntary twitching of the eyes) with its cosmic jam guitars, slightly creepy bass, and doom metal drumming.  I love how “Hylonomus” (the name of the earliest known reptile) starts off sounding like it’s a spaghetti western song and then morphs into a Middle Eastern-flavored dream that might be happening in the mind of an ancient lizard dozing in the stump of a massive, dead tree.  It then morphs a second time into a great groove that belongs in a car chase sequence in a big budget film.  It’s great to hear Comacozer cut loose like this.

Need to knock out a wall in your house to expand your kitchen?  Don’t bother with sledgehammers.  Just play the closer, “Enuma Elish,” and aim your speakers in the right direction.  The song is about the Babylonian creation myth which involves – among other things – the god Marduk defeating the goddess of the oceans and creating the earth and sky out of her body.  Comacozer somehow manages to put all this epic stuff into one song (that last nearly 12 minutes).

You might have noticed that this album only contains four songs.  Don’t let that worry you, because all of them are around thirteen minutes in length.  It’s a full album of instrumental cosmic psychedelia and worth every penny.

Keep your mind open.

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My top 25 albums of 2016 – #’s 15-11

We’re halfway to #1 on the countdown!

#15 

The Kills released a great album for their 15th anniversary.  Ash & Ice oozes with their sweaty, smoky, whiskey-tinged rock and is one of the best albums about love and sex from 2016.

#14 

I didn’t expect a full record of shoegaze from the Duke Spirit, but Kin is the best shoegaze record I’ve heard all year (and probably of the last two or three years).

#13

All Them Witches released a live album last year (which I still need to get), teased a new album for this year, and started 2016 with Dying Surfer Meets His Maker – a great blend of stoner metal and blues voodoo rock.

#12 

Comacozer contacted me through this website and asked if I’d like to hear their record.  I’m glad I said yes, because this stoner metal album, Astra Planeta, is amazing.

#11 

The KVB make excellent dark wave and shoegaze.  It’s a bit difficult to believe at first that just two people produce that much sound.  Of Desire was recorded on vintage synthesizers and sequencers, and the rich sound produced is excellent.

Who’s made it into my top 10 for 2016?  Come back tomorrow to find out!

Keep your mind open.

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Comacozer – Astra Planeta

comacozerOne of the best parts of writing this blog is when a band asks me to give them a listen and they turn out to be as good as Australia’s Comacozer.

These three psych / doom / stoner rockers have crafted a fine piece of work with their album Astra Planeta.  It’s five tracks (the shortest at 6:21) of instrumental spaced out riffs that range from solar wind trippy to asteroid impact heavy.

“Saurian Dream” starts off like a slippery salamander wriggling out of mud atop a fresh grave but then morphs into wavy heat mirages seen by a goanna sunning itself on a hot outback rock.

The guitar on “The Mind that Feeds the Eye” sounds almost like something from a spaghetti western score, even with the heavy delay pedals.  The bass is as crisp as a bullfrog’s croak, and the drum beats snap by you like telephone poles as you cruise down a lonely road.  The title reminds us that most of what we see is illusion, but what you see will be altered if your mind is altered.  All great holy men and women have known and professed this.  Comacozer add another page to the sermon.

I’m a sucker for ancient Egypt, so I’m not surprised that I love “Navigating the Mandjet.”  The mandjet was one of the Egyptian sun god Ra’s solar boats (“The Boat of Millions of Years”), and the song would be perfect for the sound system on it.  I dig the rock beat that runs through it, and the guitar and bass have a perfect Middle Eastern groove for the track.

The bass on “Illumination Cloud” sounds like something Les Claypool dreamed once.  The song builds to a great cosmic rock track with some of the best guitar shredding on the record.

I don’t know if the Apophis named in “Hypnotized by Apophis” is the Egyptian snake demon of chaos with a magical gaze or the charted 325 meter-wide asteroid that might hit the Earth in 2068.  The song’s perfect for either case, as it swirls with cosmic riffs ideal for flying through an asteroid belt and bass and drums ideal for battling a giant snake with a lance.

Astra Planeta is a solid record of excellent cosmic psych rock.  These guys need to play at a Levitation festival, and you need to buy this album.

Keep your mind open.

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