Playing an oddly sensitive brand of big-sound alpha-male rock, Comets on Fire are inherently at odds with themselves. Blue Cathedral is poignant in the right places, and underneath the wall of fury, tracks carry a melodic cadence. With the aid of the Echoplex, a vocal-warping device that churns Ethan Miller's howls into an orphaned but cognizant language, tracks like "Whiskey River" and "Blue Tomb" establish themselves as wood-paneled rec room material, best experienced through a mental and physical fog. Elsewhere, on tracks like "Brotherhood of the Harvest," the incorporation of noirish organs sounds eerily like a late-'70s Italian horror flick score. This is noise woven into a brash prog/psych package, producing sonic rage that's astonishingly easy on the ears. -- Kelly Shindler