Most Popular

  • Sexual Healing
    Sad stories and otherwise freaky tales from Florida's last sexual surrogate
  • To Hug a Porcupine
    Three little boys set out to destroy the parents who loved them. This isn't how adoption is supposed to work.
  • Smoked Tuna in the Can
    He was the first big bust of the War on Drugs. That and two bits won't get you a cup of coffee.
  • Backbreaker
    A half-kilo of blow, machine-gun blasts, and a millionaire chiropractor. Does this make sense?
  • Rubber Doll
    Polite businesswoman by day, international fetish icon by night

Recent Articles

Recent Articles by Jonathan Zwickel

National Features >

  • Houston Press

    A Dirty Picture

    What mainstream publishers don't want you to know about door-to-door magazine sales.

    By Craig Malisow

  • Riverfront Times

    Welcome to Cougar Heaven

    When these huntresses on are on the prowl, the prey very much wants to be caught.

    By Unreal

  • Broward-Palm Beach New Times

    Sweet Deal

    How rumored McCain veep choice Charlie Crist wants to bail out Big Sugar.

    By Bob Norman

  • SF Weekly

    All-American Girls

    Are Asian women getting their jawbones cut to look whiter?

    By Lauren Smiley

Comets on Fire

Avatar (Sub Pop)

By Jonathan Zwickel

Published on August 31, 2006

Eureka! Scientists just discovered that Comets on Fire is the missing link in rock 'n' roll evolution. The hard-hitting noiseniks provide the connection between late-'60s vintage Grateful Dead and Paranoid-era Black Sabbath, long theorized but until now never established. A few savvy researchers, including Comets themselves, saw this coming: The San Francisco Bay Area five-piece is indigenous to the Dead's original stomping grounds, and its earlier records were blues-based, psych-metal monuments, full of deafening riffs, droning electronic ambiance, and relentlessly hypnotic rhythms. With Avatar, Comets back off the volume, distill the distortion into eerie filigree, and take a logical step toward sonic refinement. Imagine Tommy Iomi jamming on Anthem of the Sun, the Dead's weird, trebly, 1967 studio joint. It's all there on Avatar — wiry, dual guitar interplay, muddled vocals, choogling bass lines, a sense of dark, open-ended experimentation tucked into cogent, six- to eight-minute songs. If you're a metal fan and snicker at the Dead's freewheeling ethic, you might rue the influence, but you can't deny it. And if you're a Deadhead, try something a little heavier. Both camps can come together and hesh out/get high to Comets on Fire. And the boys at the lab already proved you all have the same haircuts anyway.