A review on the Comatorium
“first, i’ll get this out of the way, but the opener (EV KAIN) sounded to me like a mix between the police and at the drive in. and they were great.
i kind of knew what to expect from zavalaz, from what has been said on here, and from the bootleg (i only listened to it once through, on the way down to the show, with us talking over it, so didn’t really hear it much). but i have to say, the sound was more energetic at points that i had expected, and they did have a few sections that approaced jamminess.
cedrics vocals were seriously amazing; very good control and pitch and all that. the harmonies were lovely. the whole band looked like they were having such a good time! cedric playing guitar was wonderful; he is so sincere and earnest when he is performing in this format. the song that the first video clip is of (on the prior page or so of this thread), repulsion??? maybe?? was one of the best of the show in my opinion. they also did one song for their encore, that cedric said he wasn’t sure was going to make it on the record, that was i think the best of the night.
i have a hard time processing lyrics when i don’t know them ahead of time, so i can’t really say what the different songs were and match them with their titles (the three clips that have been posted here have titles though). before he went into the twin constellation song, i believe it was their second song, he told the story about how his wife concieved after he played that for her, and that he found out they were having twins… it was sweet.
he totally hung around after the show. i am NOT a hang out/try to meet artists kind of chick! i’ve actually never done that before! but, since we knew that we would have that oppertunity, i dug out this old, super lame large purse i have and we packed up our two deloused story books in a folder and brought a silver sharpie. cedric was super gracious and nice and appreciative of our gushing, and happily signed both of the story books (my partner and i each have our own and are building our own separate mars volta collections). my friend who showed up got this photo of him signing them.
he got a photo with cedric too, but i figured it’s either a signature or a photo, cedric’s a busy guy and there’s pleny of other folks who actually want to have a chat with him.
it’s funny, after being at a bunch of these shows (mars volta/BR/omar/now zavalaz) i can tell who the comatorians are. when we were at the merch booth, there was a dude there at the same time as us who was like “i hear these shirts run small”. and the dude selling merch was like “what, are you on the comatorium or something?” and dude asking about shirts, my parter and i was are like “yes”. it was a funny moment.
i totally get that zavalaz doesn’t compare to volta at all, and that a lot of people in this space will be disappointed/haters whatever. i guess it depends on what kind of music you listen to outside of volta. for me, it was really refreshing and heart felt, and had just enough minor chords to keep me interested (i can’t stand straight-up constant major chords with only major sounding volcal melodies etc.). it was dramatic, sincere, and soothing.
we’ll post a pic o our signed story books later, to gloat.
because seriously, i’m amazed. i’m super shy, so that took a lot.
worth it.
EDIT: they seem to have chilled out about the video/photo recording. we didn’t do any of that, because i don’t like to be on my phone during a show, but there was a dude in front of us who snapped a couple of really great shots of cedric. he wasn’t over bearing about it, which was nice. i bet he is on here. maybe he’ll share.”
Tenterhooks
Unearthly Child
