In part two of my four part look at rock band Coheed and Cambria’s discography, I’m diving into the 2003 In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3, which is a more ambitious project from the quintet and takes them one step closer to mainstream fame.
The Band
Claudio Sanchez-Vocals, Guitar
Travis Stever-Guitar
Michael Todd-Bass, Backing Vocals
Josh Eppard-Drums, Piano
The Review
For their sophomore album, Coheed and Cambria continues the Amory Wars, with the third chapter of four. Like the previous release, the story doesn’t make any sense, but the music is stronger and leans closer to progressive rock. The songs are longer, there’s even a three-part series, “Camper Velourium,” which emcompasses most of the middle of the album. Three songs are over the eight minute mark and the guitar work by Sanchez and Stever is more technical, with some fantastic work on display in closer “The Light & The Glass” and the “Camper Velourium” trilogy.
The story this time around involves Al The Killer, Inferno, a Red Army, the son of Coheed and Cambria, Claudio, going after revenge for the death of his family, and a whole bunch of randomness that only makes sense if you do proper research. That isn’t a fault against the album; its nice to hear a concept album that you have to think a little bit about.
The music is a bit heavier and more progressive, with an increase of guitar solos and less emo tendencies. There are concert staples on here (the title track, “Blood Red Summer,” “A Favor House Atlantic”) and the album as a whole is more memorable than their debut. The evolution of the band over a two year period is quite evident. In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3 is another worthwhile album from the band, but it would be with their third album, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume 1: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness, that all the pieces of the puzzle came together for Coheed and Cambria. But that’s for next week…
The Band
Claudio Sanchez-Vocals, Guitar
Travis Stever-Guitar
Michael Todd-Bass, Backing Vocals
Josh Eppard-Drums, Piano
The Review
In 2002, New York rock band Coheed and Cambria released their debut album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade, the second part of a four-part tetralogy. The rock world didn’t know what they were getting themselves into when they welcomed the album with open arms. While my least favorite Coheed album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade is a solid debut that introduced the listener to the beginning of one of the most confusing and extravagant concept album of all time.
The story is so mulit-faceted and complex that it took a comic book series and a fan site to understand any part of what’s going on. The most basic summary of the album involves Coheed and his wife Cambria. Coheed has a serum in him that, when activated, can trigger a process that leads to the destruction of the world. The list of characters is expansive, with general, sages, and the couple’s children, who may have to be killed to save the universe.
Thankfully, the music is much easier to digest than the story. While not as progressive as later releases, the instrumental work is still quite more technical than most other bands in the post-hardcore genre. Sanchez’s vocals are quite high, almost reaching Geddy Lee-level. It’s a little distracting at times, but doesn’t ruin the music. The album includes fan favorites “Devil In Jersey City,” “Time Consumer,” and “God Send Conspirator.”
Like I said earlier, I enjoyed the later releases of Coheed and Cambria more due to their higher progressive tendences, but The Second Stage Turbine Blade is a great debut and one that pushed Coheed and Cambria to the fore-front. It’s one of the few concept albums that is worth doing research on, only to better understand the weighty concept on display.
New York/New Jersey metal band Castrofate is setting up to make a huge statement with their sophomore effort, Cataclysmic Insanity. A concept album about the destruction of the Earth and a group of survivors fighting to survive, the band is pulling out all the stops to make sure that they will be a force to be reckon with in the metal community. Led by lyricist/frontman/guitarist Dan Castro, Castrofate has crafted an album that is epic in nature, yet grounded enough to avoid sounding too bombastic, with a solid set of material to back the sci-fi story.
The story takes its time to build, and while we don’t get a sense of how many survivors there are or even get any names, the anxiety, confusion, and crippling depression they feel over the loss of everything they knew is clearly expressed by Castro’s lyrics and his vocal delivery. In my mind, the album’s story is split into three parts: the destruction of Earth and the survivors’ reaction, the “new hope” that the survivors find out about, and the result of it.
Cataclysmic Insanity shows that Castrofate has potential to become major figures in the metal community. Most of the songs are pulse-pounding thrash monsters, with some epics thrown in there to show off the band’s progressive nature. While the band does hit a few missteps with “Misguided Path” and some production issues, the core sound is one that holds potential for the future. Castrofate has recently solidified their line-up, adding Dave Matasavich on lead guitar and Tom Bradley on the drums. In the liner notes in the booklet, frontman Dan Castro says that their next album is “gonna be ten times MORE insane.” Judging by the quality story, songwriting, and fantastic guitar work on Cataclysmic Insanity, Castro might be right.
For the full review, head on over to 411Mania.com
Here is the second part of my interview with Sticky Business guitarist Joey Zlotek. Don’t forget to visit the band’s MySpace for more information on Sticky Business. Next week, I’ll highlight two other New Jersey bands making their mark on the metal scene.
I was curious about having a cover song as the band’s first single. Do you want the song to be the thing that defines the band in the beginning?
We do have a radio edit of “Your Girlfriend,” where certain words are edited. We also have a three minute edit of “The Last Guitar Hero,” which I refuse to put out there. It’s just not right. “Jumping Jack Flash” doesn’t really sound like the original and its something people recognize, familiarize themselves with. As soon as the song starts, and everybody is grooving to their own thing, you know it’s going to be “Jumping Jack Flash,” but your going to be like ‘Holy crap, they just turned a mo-ped into a Harley Davidson.’
Is the band confident enough at this point to push themselves to the six and seven minute length to be commercial successful or do you feel like you have to stay at the three-four minute mark?
Unfortunately, we do feel like we have to stay at the three-four minute mark to be commercial successful…at this point…if there is a demand for it, songs like “The Last Guitar Hero” will get out there.
How difficult is it to make an impact in today’s music scene, with a dime-a-dozen rock bands?
It is very difficult…a lot of people don’t have the drive for it. They get deterred by the fact that it is a dime-a-dozen and stuff like that. If this is where your heart is at, and this is what you want to do, it’s not just fun and games. There’s a lot of work that goes into this…people behind the scenes that get no credit. You might see four people on the stage, but there are another ten people who helped them….the last band I was in was a great band, as far as the area we were located; we had the biggest following out of anybody there. It was time to start branching off and doing other things, but I was the only one who felt the drive to do something. From there, it fell apart, because the heart wasn’t there…the fact that it is dime-a-dozen means that if you get a following, you get upgraded to quarter or silver dollar status. In the media-driven world today, the one-hit wonder artist isn’t going to last long. If you have that one hit and you don’t have something to follow it up with, you’re yesterday’s news.
Does the band have any plans to record a full length album after the EP?
We focused on three initially because they were the songs we picked. There is also a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Commotion” on the MySpace and that was from Matt and myself. I sing in that one; Gary will probably lay down vocals for that…there’s also a Megadeth/Iron Maiden-type song that we have stored away. There’s a shuffle boogey rocker that might follow up “Jumping Jack Flash.”
