Comet Control Blend Psych Rock and Brit Pop into a Peaceful but Heavy Sound

This has been one hell of a chaotic year. It seems almost as though Lemmy’s death acted as the butterfly wings trigeering a tidal wave of heinousness that refuses to slow down. Most of us in the metal world have learned to be comforted by harsh sounds in the past, but sometimes when the wounds are fresh and gaping a little peace is necessary. Comet Control’s upcoming full-length Center of the Maze provides exactly that.

Lead track “Dig Your Head” premiered over on the Wall Street Journal last week, and the infectiously spaced-out grooves set atop a solid tambourine backbeat exhibit the band doing what they do best: merging elements of ’90s-does-70s psychedelic garage rock with dreamy Brit pop. Best of all, they do so in a way that is meaningful, beautiful, and evocative of a time gone by without relying on the same hackneyed platitudes that made Oasis basically unlistenable once “Wonderwall” became the prom anthem of millennials who never had a contextual connection to it the first time around.

Flowery descriptions aside, there is still a good bit of weight to these songs. Plenty of distortion and dissonance lend a heavy hand to tracks like “Golden Rule,” and the anthemic guitar build-up in the album’s ten-minute closer “Artificial Light” bring to mind Lynyrd Skynard in their heyday if they played everything in slow motion through a fuzz pedal in thick London Fog. Comparisons to The Black Angels and Swervedriver hold true, so if that’s your bag, check out “Center of the Maze” when it drops on June 24th via Tee Pee Records; pre-order here.