Piecing It All Together

If you ever find yourself in a discussion about New York prog quartet Coheed & Cambria, there are two talking points that will, invariably, come up. The first one is about lead singer Claudio Sanchez's hair that is equal parts impressive and ridiculous, the second, is the band's propensity to take the concept record to its greatest height. After all, Coheed & Cambria are the guys who created series of records that tell the story of interconnected interstellar conflicts, which have spun off their own series of comics and are now being adapted into a Hollywood movie. The brain behind the stories, front man Sanchez, loves penning these concept records as a means of dealing with what's going on in his life.

“I love taking something so real and transforming it into something that someone else thinks of as completely fake. Because I know the code, how to do the translation. And what makes this thing so complex is so simplistic.”

When pushed for specifics about how The Afterman records – which tell the story of space traveller Sirius Amory trying to locate a mysterious energy source – the Keywork, stem from his personal life, the singer explains, “I wrote Sentry The Defiant because I was raging against management for suggesting that I write the kind of song that might be 'radio-friendly', which is almost ridiculous. I wrote The Afterman about my wife's really good friend passing away, and my wife finding out about it on Facebook. Things like that… You could sit down and say that because Domino is an eight-minute epic it's about space ships and gargoyles, but it's actually a metaphorical piece about our ex-bass player Michael Todd and the tragedy that he's been enduring. All of these things are very much real. There's reality in the music, you just have to look at it the right way.”

For Sanchez, the concept underpinning Coheed's records is a way for listeners to experience more from a record, to get more deeply involved in it. But it's not an excuse to cheap out on the kind of emotion and introspection that generally underpins good rock music.

“You can look at this record, where all the songs are written about personal experiences, so it's not just about telling the story of these characters. It's telling our story as well. I guess I've always looked at the concept as a way of getting the music to live on off the record. Almost give the songs legs and allow them to come off of the album, where they can be more than songs. I'm not sure I can envision Coheed without that element on the records. Because it's a way for me to exercise two sides to my creativity, instead of just making them songs and letting them be. And then it also becomes this situation where the songs are like a yearbook, or a journal. I can pinpoint what any of these songs are about beyond the concept and why I wrote that song.”

Because of the reality at the core of records like last year's The Afterman: Ascension and this year's The Afterman: Descension, Sanchez thinks Coheed fans can decide how they choose to interact with the music.

“It's up to the listener really. It's the power of suggestion that makes them conceptual, because these songs are very much about real, almost universal, things. Anybody can put themselves in the perspective of the driver's seat here, or my position. Which is essentially what I'm singing these songs about, moments in my life. So it's really, entirely up to the listener to decide how they want to experience it. They can experience The Afterman records as stand-alone rock records if you want to look past the fact that the album title might suggest a concept or you can partake in the concept and fall into the world of the Amory.”

Describing the pair of records as his favourites in the band's discography because the line-up was gelling and they had a good period of time to allow the material to evolve organically, Sanchez says before their creation, things had gotten rather stale for the band. “We fell into the schedule and structure of being a professional band, where it was like you tour in response to a record, and when you're done with that tour, you go in the studio and make another one. And that doesn't allow you the time to get that perspective and give your albums those ups and downs that the best records have. And this time around I had that time to create, and that lent the album the up and down of time.”

With a pair of albums that the band is stoked on, Coheed & Cambria are ready to jump back into a touring cycle to get the work out there. According to Sanchez, the live show has always been Coheed & Cambria's bread and butter. Understandable, seeing as there's not too many radio stations who might be interested in playing five-album long concept jams. “It's always been an organic, word-of-mouth following for Coheed. That's what has gotten us the longevity to take it this far, so we know it's all about getting out their and doing the work to spread the message. So that's what we're going to do.”

Ahead of the band's return to play a run of East Coast dates in Australia, the conversation with Sanchez turns towards the specifics of what the band are doing in the live arena. Mentioning that the band weren't going to be playing The Afterman duology start-to-finish, well, at least not yet, how are Coheed planning on presenting their latest records to the fans?

“When we play with this album live, it's very much about the music. But we have started to incorporate the conceptual elements into the live show without having to do the entire record from front to back. So that's sort of been how we've been approaching the live performance, taking these elements which are very conceptual and utilising them to act as a guide for the experience that spans across the band's discography.”

“In The Afterman albums there are these segues that sort of piece the experience together, featuring this character called the All Mother, and the All Mother is kind of this guide to Sirius Amory on this journey. So we recreated those segues and created some new ones exclusive to the live experience, and we've utilised the All Mother to be this guide to the audience. Through the set she sort of appears, hints at what the next tunes are going to be and guides the feeling of what we're hoping to bring to the audience throughout the set.”

It's an ambitious idea for the stage show, but Sanchez isn't worried about the band's ability to pull it off. They're happy to be putting in the work required to present The Afterman material to Coheed & Cambria fans.

“We all really want to be up there. We're not putting on an act and just jumping through the hoops because this is like a necessary evil. We genuinely want to be doing this at this moment in time.”

Coheed & Cambria will be playing the following dates:

Friday 19 April - The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 20 April - The Metro, Sydney NSW
Sunday 21 April - Palace Theatre, Melbourne VIC