Comets On Fire

Santa Cruz-based Comets on Fire (vocalist/guitarist Ethan Miller, keyboardist Noel Harmonson, bassist Ben Fleishman, drummer Utrillo Belcher) play acid-rock with a punk vengeance. Comets on Fire (COF, 2000 - Alternative Tentacles, 2003) was one of the most intense albums of distorted and anthemic rock'n'roll since MC5. It erupts with the frantic and brutal All I Need, a Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin) for the post-Chrome generation, overflowing with distortions and electronic effects, and pummeled by a seismic riff. Grave Robbers and Got a Feelin' concoct more garage-rock bacchanals, and The Way Down even manages to increase that infernal rhythm. Days of Vapors Cosmic riffs a` la Blue Cheer pen the Ghost of the Cosmos and the agonizing Let's Take It All. The demented Days of Vapors is the perfect closer: one last mayhem to seal an album of mayhems.

Loud, fast, apocalyptic waves of guitar distortions and gigantic rhythm shake Field Recordings From the Sun (Ba Da Bing, 2002), a superb addition to the canon of psychedelic hard-rock.
Beneath the Ice Age is a slow-burning, taking nine minutes of chanting and percussion to explode, but Return to Heaven takes off with MC5-ian frenzy and a nod to Sun Ra's extraterrestrial metaphysics. The fusion between heavy-blues and free-jazz is even more ferocious on the mad, dissonant, pulsing ESP (imagine Jimi Hendrix during an epyleptic fit). The 10-minute juggernaut The Black Poodle adds saxophone and piano to the mayhem. Somehow the drummer manages to even increase the already superhuman rhythm. Albert Ayler and Von Lmo would enjoy this.
The band has reduced the rhythmic impact, but has increased its spiritual vision.

Noel Harmonson also plays in Hugh Golden's Lowdown, another Santa Cruz outfit that debuted with Revolver II (Strange Attractors, 1999), a sarcastic, cacophonous and anarchic collection of jams that wed the Camper Van Beethoven and Old Time Relijun, and Y Is A Crooked Letter (Zum Audio, 2003), a rather different beast that harks back to the intense acid-rock maelstroms of Japan's noise-core bands.

Ben Chasny of the Six Organs of Admittance joined Comets On Fire for their next album. Opening with The Bee And The Cracking Egg, that manages a nuclear fission of the Who's stuttering My Generation, MC5's take on Sun Ra's Starship and Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown, Blue Cathedral (Sub Pop, 2004) emphasizes the most terrifying excesses of the first album. On the other hand, they spend more time preparing the climax of a song, like when voodoo-blues rhythm and distorted hornpipe-like guitar propel Whiskey River into an Jimi Hendrix-ian orgy of distorted riffs and frantic drumming. And they also spend more time figuring out how to end a song, so that it doesn't sound like the abrupt suspension of a carpet bombing. Codas are often meaningful antitheses to the main theme, a trick that lends intellectual depth to the most primal, barbaric emotional bursts. Elements of Hendrix (1983) also surface in the long modulated distortion that eject Blue Tomb into an orbit of eternal bluesy trance. But their most effective weapon remains the sheer density and frenzy of their playing, best displayed in Antlers Of The Midnight Sun, a chaotic bacchanal driven by the saxophone into the demented state of mind of Von Lmo.
New ideas flicker on the horizon, like when the jazzy, piano-rich tapestry of Pussy Foot The Duke, which sounds like a parody of progressive-rock balladry a` la Yes, engage in spacey Wish You Were Here-period Pink Floyd-ian jamming. Even better, the majestic organ-soaring Brotherhood Of The Harvest brings back memories of Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets. Wild Whiskey is three minutes of transcendent acoustic strumming, somewhere in between Popol Vuh's psychedelic liturgy and John Fahey's radiant visions.
The pandemonium is rebirth, not destruction. It is not catharsis yet, but it is moving inward.

Burning Star Core (Yik Yak, 2005) is a space-rock jam with the namesake Ohio-based band.

Leaving behind the noisiest and "acid-est" elements of their original sound, Comets On Fire seemed to shift towards a more cohesive music on Avatar (Subpop, 2006). Instead of revisiting for the 100th time the Grateful Dead's Dark Star, they created seven complex songs via subtle processes of composition. These songs span a broad range of moods, from the embarrassingly languid ballad Lucifer's Memory to the exotic, relentless instrumental pow-wow of Sour Smoke (the album's most captivating idea), to the ethereally stoned The Swallow's Eye to the stately power ballad Hatched Upon The Age (with a melody that many hard-rock bands would die for) to the incendiary space-rock of Dogwood Rust to the vehement blues-rock of Jaybird (propelled by a Led Zeppelin-ian riff) to the brief but demonic Mc5-esque rock'n'roll of Holy Teeth, the album's most ripping moment. The new Comets On Fire are restrained and, all considered, tidy. There is a new philosophy of order at work, that replaces and displaces the old philosophy of creative chaos. The reference point is the psychedelic rock of the early 1970s: Jefferson Starship, Quicksilver, Country Joe McDonald. Following a similar route, the Grateful Dead ended up playing country music. Comets On Fire are still far from being a roots-band or pop singers, but the trend is towards stylish (not mad) music. Avatar's songs border on nostalgic retro emulation, or, quite simply, re-enact a landmark age of rock music.

Ethan Miller is also active in Howlin' Rain (with Sunburned Hand Of The Man's drummer John Moloney), whose Howlin' Rain (Birdman, 2006) Brian Jonestown Massacre is deliberate and superficial Sixties revival. Magnificent Fiend (2008) refined the style but did not significantly improve over that idea of retro rock for retired hippies. Adding keyboardist Joel Robinow shifted the sound a bit towards the Steve Miller Band and Leon Russell's projects of the 1970s.