Posted on 09/23/2005

 

The sub-genre is currently a rock n' roll plague. Rock artists are swiftly brushed under one of many labels: metal, hardcore, indie, emo, progressive, or often muddled combination of several. And oftentimes, this classification is based on a single song which has little to do with the rest of the artist’s body of work. I’ve heard Coheed and Cambria classified as almost everything; their first album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade earned emo and pop-rock cred, while the group's second release, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 garnered a nod from prog-rockers. With Coheed's third major release, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness, Coheed and Cambria further its lack of categorization as the group expands its epic musical soundscape.

“Keeping the Blade” should immediately bring a smile to the face of any longtime Coheed and Cambria fan. As the orchestral intro builds musically, it crescendos with the familiar melody that can only be described as the “theme song” of the Coheed and Cambria story, which is present in some form on all the albums. The combination of lead singer Claudio Sanchez’s distinctive nasal, high-pitched voice combined with the band’s notoriously thick sound (layers upon layers of guitar and vocal work) make for a dramatic sound which serves as the score to the band's comic book series.



he acoustic “Always and Never” is a spaced-out and trippy folk song finding Sanchez begging “stay with me and fall asleep, pray to God for no bad dreams” while the faint giggling of children envelops the listener. The similarly melodic “Wake Up” is a bittersweet emotional calling to a past lover who has lost interest and moved on.

The group is unafraid to experiment, and the result is several of the album’s tracks exceeding six and seven minutes in length, many of the songs evolving musically throughout for a truly dramatic feel. The ballsy first single “Welcome Home”, with its simple acoustic strumming introduction soon explodes into impossibly multi-layered electric guitar riffs assisted by choir chants that make for a truly unique listening experience. The eerie “Apollo I: The Writing Writer” displays a haunting melody as Sanchez unapologetically declares “I don’t want to think of you anymore. Goodnight, tonight, goodbye”.



oheed and Cambria take a more traditional punk approach on the second single,“The Suffering”, with upbeat guitar riffs and a chant-along chorus, which appears again on “The Willing Well I: Fuel For The Feeding End”. Meanwhile the playful musicality of “The Willing Well II: Fear Through The Eyes of Madness” is accompanied by the cryptic lyrics “you’ll burn in hell while they’re digging you out” along with a lot of other strange gibberish that won’t mean much to someone not well versed in the Coheed and Cambria sci-fi saga.



n the end, the group succeeds in making quality rock n' roll music beyond classification. The risk-taking band has created an epic with a sound unlike anything else found in today's music.