First Utterance

Released in 1971, Comus's debut 'First Utterance' stands as one of the most extreme and influential documents of the British progressive folk movement. While contemporaries like Fairport Convention looked to the past for heritage, Comus looked to the past for primal, pagan energy. The album is characterized by its unique instrumentation - specifically the lack of a traditional drum kit, using instead hand percussion and the rhythmic snap of acoustic guitars to drive its high-energy compositions. Lyrically, it draws from Milton's 'Comus' and themes of Greek mythology, but filters them through a lens of 20th-century psychological horror. Despite positive contemporary reviews from NME, the album was a commercial failure, leading to the band's dissolution. However, its legacy grew exponentially in the 1990s and 2000s, becoming a foundational text for both the freak folk revival and the blackened folk metal scene, most notably cited as a primary influence by Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth.