Co&Ca

by astroknot

I have a uniquely interesting perspective about this subject. I take an interest in my local music scene. I’m not close enough to be labeled some weird male version of a groupie, but I’m not so far removed from it all to not know who people are, or where certain streets are when they’re put into songs. I know that in my area, Kingston, NY, there’s a decent selection of good music to get into. One band in particular you may know, Coheed and Cambria. All the information I found about them says they are from a town near seventy miles away from my home town, not exactly right down the road, but when you know the people in the liner notes someone tells to fuck off, because you went to the same school, that’s my community’s music scene.

In the beginning, that’s not really the start for most of the bands I’d say, but for all my purposes it’s where I’ll start. Their first album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade was alright, had a few memorable songs, “Everything Evil”, and “Delirium Trigger” to name two. It’s a solid introduction to the group, and good listen if you were ever inclined to check them out.

Then they released the second album In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, and Coheed and Cambria really stepped up the game and this the album I mostly associate with this band. As with the previous effort there is an instrumental opening track, but where it IKSSE:3 changes is the story differs is the second track. Whereas “Time Consumer” is a good first track, the title song on In Keeping Secrets is an epic piece of music.

If you weren’t aware of it, Coheed and Cambria has a concept behind it with different characters and story. And being remotely interested in the band I decided to check that out, which up until In Keeping Secrets was fairly straightforward. After reading the couple comics the were released, twice, to make sure I had the story straight. After reading them I thought I had a good idea of the abstract story. Then Coheed went ahead released their third album, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 1: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness, and instead of trying to further the fiction, while attempting to prolong the story is where I gave up in that aspect. With the first to records their was an overcomplicated simple story. Coheed Killgannon was supposedly a genetically enhanced being that the government made to do something or other, eventually got married to a woman named Cambria and had a few children. When the first Good Apollo album came the fiction had Coheed and Cambria’s eldest son Claudio as the main protagonist, to which in interviews with the vocalist and one of the two guitarists of the band Claudio Sanchez had said that naming Claudio after himself and basically using himself as a template for the character was a bad idea.

And this is where it all goes downhill for me. The concept behind Good Apollo volume one, is a sudden perspective change. Where before it was a simple story told in mostly the third person, to pulling back out of the entire universe to show “the writer” behind the story and to show how the events in his life affected what was going on in the main storyline. Or in other words, instead of Return of the Jedi, there was a ninety minute montage of what happened to George Lucas during his week. So after declaring it a bad idea to model the character after himself, Claudio pulls back a layer to add some new confusion in a “writer”, except for the fact that up until that point was .himself. The man who said it was a bad idea in hindsight to make character after himself created another after himself. And on an related unrelated side note, another comic Claudio Sanchez wrote, Kill Audio, in which not only does Kill Audio sound like Claudio, but the character also looks remarkably like Claudio .

"Remarkable", right?

Following the Good Apollo vol. 1 tour, and some “band drama” in the off time, Coheed and Cambria began their fourth album titled Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Volume 2: No World for Tomorrow. The record itself starts out alright, does all those things a Coheed and Cambria CD is known to do. The main concern I had with it comes near halfway through this epic chapter, and that is, it gets really boring. The last few songs just tend to blur together, and they have that even crazier less than applicable song titles. The last five have the main title as “The End Complete” with the variable subtitles. This isn’t a precedent for Coheed, as they have done certain chapters in the chronicling, “The Velorium Camper” trilogy in In keeping Secrets, and “The Willing Well” series in the first volume of Good Apollo. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have had a cycle of songs like they do on this album, but I think it would have been better to devote something that is supposed to have a giant finale to an entire album, and then maybe devote a trilogy or anthology of songs to a part that has a deeper meaning in the context. On the other hand I am kind of glad they did it as they did because, can you imagine the nonsensical entirely too long and convoluted song titles? Not that they aren’t trying hard enough already.

The fifth and most recent album, Year of the Black Rainbow, has been unleashed, and I’ll say that this album picks up right where Good Apollo vol. 2 leaves off, in a nice big block of tired and fatigued songs. At least it tries to break the chains that was status quo for a Coheed and Cambria record, such as a relatively short record title, and there are no sweeping series of songs devoted to anything. Although no one song really was a stand out, and the first track seemed to blend right into the next. That is until it came to the seventh song, titled “World of Lines”, and it didn’t stand out so much as it was anything extraordinary. The song stuck out to me because the first ten or so seconds sounded very similar to one of their other earlier songs, “A Favor House Atlantic”, and I did switch back and forth between the two tracks really listening to each, and yes, the beat is eerily too similar for my taste.

The chronicling fiction has gotten to be a real nuisance, and honestly doesn’t really add or take away anything major, and if they dropped the whole story concept altogether, I wouldn’t take much notice. Maybe that’s what they need because Coheed and Cambria hasn’t been all bad, I’ve only seen them once live though. I’ll see them again however, if I ever get a chance too and I hope too.