Man, I was just talking about Comatose a bit ago in my ASkySoBlack review. Remember? I do, mostly because I wrote it. It took all my mental, physical, and spiritual force to not amend a parenthetical plea to Comatose in that review to drop something soon. I think I even was gonna say ‘please’ as well – I am a nice, polite boy after all.
And fuck me, barely two weeks later, I’m staring at the quaint, classic cover of a new EP from one of my favorite bands of the decade in disbelief late on a Thursday night. It looks like something out of Back to the Future when Marty McFly went back to 1955 to commit incest by accident and had to find his way back home to 1985. I’m unclear on the thematic significance of the cover for this music or the band, but I have my theories. It does assuage the emotional sadboi weight that usually comes with their music. It almost seems hopeful, like it conveys a theoretical better, simpler time before we saw Cybertrucks driving down the road and Nazi rallies taking place out in the open. Then again, Black people couldn’t even sit at the same diner counter as whites during this time so how much has really progressed over the decades? Not as far as we like to think. Is that what the title refers to? Possibly.
What has changed though is Comatose‘s dedication to their craft. I make no dramatic overstatements when I say Not So Far is by far their best collective work yet, an astonishing jump in quality from their full-length debut, A Way Back, which was already a sundering, gazy good time rife with strong writing and performances. Two of Not So Far‘s songs were demoed in the years since, but feel complete here, polished to a mirror sheen like your dad’s cherry red Chevy Nova from the ’60s. “Hundred Fifty” specifically has quickly become one of my favorite songs of the year so far and possibly my all-time favorite the band has put out (sorry “Inside”). I adore the melodies and power it holds, double bass drums – shit, the drums in general – really commanding the whole track and pushing the track in a way that makes you want to drum yourself. The riff during the pre-chorus is one of the best they’ve laid to tape. Real gourmet shit.
Though that’s my favorite in the tracklist, the others are by no means slouching. I think the motto of Not So Far is variety. “Hundred Fifty” is a strong-ass opener, but then we get “Yesterdaze” which is the emotional core of the EP. The hook is high and clean, flirting with pop emo tendencies, and the lyrics drudge up feelings of regret, loss, and reflection on how the past was handled. It’s the longest track here which really allows you to sit with it and all its instrumental intricacies which bathe more in atmosphere than any other song here. “Jagan Eye” (a YuYu Hakusho reference?) is a bridge between those two, driving rock at the core with gazed-up vocal effects to lend an ethereality to the piece that complements the mid-tempo throughout. The end houses harsh, throaty vocals that are rarely employed. That makes them feel more like a treat than an option the band uses here and there.
Getting to “High Speed Chicken Feed” makes me sad only because I have to reckon with the EP almost being over. But Not So Far doesn’t lose the plot at the end; this track really plasters on the Alice In Chains worship. I try to avoid that comparison because not only is it unfair, but I also just want Comatose to exist as their own thing despite the hook that got me into them were the common threads I drew between them like I did with ASkySoBlack. The vocals pierce in a haunting way, the lyrics portraying a battered sense of loneliness and isolation of the Staley/Cantrell school. It doesn’t quite outdo “Needle in the Hay” from Sex Over Thirty (what a track), but comes damn close.
Legitimately every song here is worthy of praise and looping, and when every song is worthy of looping, then you just loop the project itself over and over. I’ve lost count of how many cycles Not So Far has made on my Bandcamp and Tidal profiles, but I know it’s enough to likely take the top spot of most streams of the month even this early on. Comatose are still young – growth is expected, but even still what was accomplished here is impressive and affecting in a way they had yet to tread upon. I love this band, bro. If their next LP is more of this quality, they should have no problem breaking out further into music’s endless void as a shining star within it. No pressure.
Seems exceedingly corny to say the only downside of a project like this is that I just wanted more of it, but it’s really the only thing I could even think of. Four tracks of some of Comatose‘s best shit yet just means you want a fifth track, a sixth one, maybe even a seventh, but now we’re just getting into biblical greed territory. For now, I’ll cherish Not So Far as one of the best EPs/short projects I’ve heard in quite a long while because it is just that. Heavy grunge hardly ever gets better than this.
