Review: Coheed and Cambria - Third Album

Wed Sep 28, 07:38 PM by Joseph McClune

Get this straight: I am somewhat loathe to use an IM conversation to illustrate a point (no I’m not) but I felt this was pretty appropriate:

joe: new coheed: not that great
mike: agreed
mike: same as last year’s record
mike: my first line in my review, if i were to do it would go something like this:
joe: ill write mine
joe: then count 123
joe: and we will send at the same time.
mike: : ok
mike: are u ready
joe: yeah
joe: go
joe: “it turns out that claudio, the boss headman of coheed and cambria, is forgetful, as in “when he wrote the most recent album, he forgot to bring something with him: the infectious popmetal hooks that made their previous effort so utterly enjoyable”
mike: Move over Mars Volta, there’s only room for one overhyped opus of masturbatory grandiloquence: Coheed and Cambria’s “Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness.”
joe:: ok, so mine is the second line.
mike: works for me
mike: i am thoroughly disappointed though
joe: i am not disappointed.
joe: and i will tell you why.
mike: there’s nothing that makes it sound like they took anything from the last album to make it better
mike: they just kinda followed the same path, only worse than before
mike: i enjoy the two singles but i think the rest is garbage
joe: because i had a feeling that this would be a fluke, and to compound this thinking is the fact that they only prereleased two (the best) songs, which also happen to be the songs that are “actually worht listening to”
mike: exactly
mike: rather than an 80 minute rock opera, this would’ve served nicely as a 2 song EP, perhaps with a live track at the end…

later
mike: i also found that i could tolerate track 4
mike: bringing my current total of tolerable tracks to: 3
mike: of like 78

If you’re a Coheed fan (which I admittedly am, although 1. I am not nearly fanboy status, (especially with the caliber of fanboys Coheed has) and 2. Seeing them live was both rad and funny) then you have been looking forward to this newest album for quite some time. The anticipation was for good reason, seeing as how Second Stage Turbine Blade and In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 are both great. In Keeping Secrets… in particular does an amazing job of tempering the band’s 80s metal leanings with really good pop hooks, and choruses that are pretty much impossible NOT to sing.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true of the new album, which we will henceforth call GA,IBSIV,VO:FFTtEoM. Coheed’s biggest strength, aside from their techincal ability, which is inarguable, is frontman and songwriter Claudio Sanchez’s pop sensibility. Unfortunately, it seems as if he left this sensibility at the door, or just looked to In Keeping Secrets… for inspiration.

The least tasteful instance of this self-plagiarism is when “The Suffering” directly lifts one of the best hooks from the previous albums: the “pull the trigger and the nightmare stops” from the end of “Three Evils,” off of “In Keeping Secrets…” If this is a purposeful use of a “theme,” I’m all for it, except that in this case it’s clumsy and artless. Otherwise maybe Claudio is out of ideas.

That aside, there exists a wealth of extraneous production on the entire album, including cheerleader “heys,” baby mumblings, and a recurring stupid banging piano. “The Willing Well,” the four-part series that concludes the album, ends up being more a disappointing effort at some theatrical metal, a la Queensryche. But Queensryche sucks ass, remember? Closing track “The Final” is alright, and was definitely entertaining live as a dirgey jam.

In the midst of a barrel of overwrought rehash come a few gems: “Welcome Home,” “Ten Speed,” and the end of “Once Upon Your Dead Body” are high points, and are hopefully indications that maybe this is an erroneous lackluster middle album; maybe subsequent albums will have the juice that we are used to from Coheed.

It might also be helpful to note that ending your chorus lyric with an “Oh, oh oooowowow” doesn’t make it any better.

PS: Claudio stops singing lines in every song so the audience can do it for him. True story.

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