‘Am I a product of my environment? Or is my environment a product of me? I’m a product of the television screen, A self-made American man’ (Self-Made American Man)

Candy Apple’s base recipe of reverb-drenched, shoegaze infused guitar being melded with an unbridled hardcore ferocity has always held an undeniable appeal.  The band’s 2021 debut LP, Sweet Dreams Of Violence, certainly did not disappoint.  Yet, at the same time, it felt like there was significant headroom for the band to still explore and their follow-up 2022’s World For Sale gave notice that Candy Apple, who feature members of fellow Denver outfits Of Feather And Bone and Raw Breed, were going to do exactly that.  And on Comatose, the sense of a band fully hitting their stride, knowing exactly how to harness their influences, is utterly exhilarating.

The key, perhaps, to this fuller realisation has been to elevate the other constituents of their sound without diminishing the power of their dissonant riffage in the slightest.  Front and centre are the lurching, bouncily elastic bass-lines and pounding yet limber drums that fuel the band’s infectiously groove-laden barrage. In fact, a certain swaying looseness, at times an almost rock’n’roll strut, pervades without ever diluting the band’s inherent, primordial heaviness.

Meanwhile, the vocals segue in the blink of an eye from the demonically growled to the ominously whispered by way of the gruffly melodic, perfectly calibrated to the wider onslaught.  Lyrically, the album primarily explores themes of choice (or the lack thereof) through an allegorical lens of bodily function – a sense of being detached and disembodied, unable to shape the world around you.  There is barely a false move, and personal stand-out moments include the bone shuddering swagger of Heaven’s Gate, the sneering Amputate and the absolutely rampaging Self-Made American Man.