Claudio Sanchez Digs Deep Into New Coheed And Cambria Album 'The Father Of Make Believe'

Today marks the release date of Coheed And Cambria’s tenth album.

The New York-based progressive rock/metal outfit have just released The Father Of Make Believe, an album which continues the narrative established in the band’s The Amory Wars / Vaxis universe. The album also marks the follow-up to 2022’s Vaxis Act II: A Window Of The Waking Mind, which brought the band newfound success with the first Top 10 radio single of their career, Shoulders.

Moving forward while honouring their storied history, The Father Of Make Believe finds the band asking a series of questions while feeling a range of emotions and experiencing thoughts at war with each other. As vocalist and lead guitarist Claudio Sanchez puts it, the album explores “a war within myself.”

Upon announcing the album in November, he added: “With every album, I try to ‘outdo’ the one before, or at least make something that sounds different and evolved in some way. I found Window to be such a quintessential record for the band, so it was extremely difficult for me to envision a follow up.

“I think that initial struggle added to the feeling of having a kind of musical midlife crisis… this constant internal battle of searching for creative release and growth… the being unsure if it’s the right path. This one took more effort in the beginning, but in the end I think the digging was worth it for the subsequent surge.”

Over the last two decades, Coheed And Cambria have pushed the envelope of what a rock band can be with their genre-defying approach to songwriting, multifaceted story arcs across multiple albums, and a comic book series which marks the longest running concept story in music.

To celebrate the release of The Father Of Make Believe, Sanchez has detailed the creative inspirations surrounding the making of the album for The Music. You can listen to The Father Of Make Believe Below or pre-order a physical copy of the album here.

The Creative Inspirations Behind The Father Of Make Believe by Claudio Sanchez

Firstly, for me, life is really what informed what this record is about. As I’m getting older, more and more of my family is passing away.

I haven’t really experienced that much loss in my life before, and this album is just me putting things into perspective, and sort of questioning what existence would be like without me, how would my family process that, or vice versa if my wife were to pass away. It’s all those sorts of questions. And with that comes other questions.

I mean, I’m kind of living my dream right now, but what would things have been like if I had never suggested The Amory Wars / Vaxis concept in the first place? And also: what does the future look like for the band without the concept once it’s done? 

Outside of that crazy, deep answer, another big inspiration was being in this room [his studio] I’m sitting in right now. This is where I do most of my writing. With the exception of Blind Side Sonny and Meri Of Mercy on this album, those two were actually written in Paris. But outside of that, I spent most of the time for this album writing in this very room.

I’d wake up in the morning, and just being here will send me into a spiral of creativity. There’s lots of instruments here, I have instruments all over the house. I get to just be myself in solitude here, and I’ve always found that comforting when writing music for the newer records.

We’ve really kind of allowed that to be the nucleus of output instead of going into the studio and recreating everything from the ground up. We’re taking the elements that are created in this room and making that a big part of the piece that we’re putting out there.

And lastly, up until working with Zakk Cervini, and not that all of my producer collaborations have been like this, but sometimes I feel like it’s a very part-time thing for producers when they come into the fold.

Whereas, when we’re doing it alone… I mean, this is our life and we get to be as free as possible, we get to explore as many things without being on the clock with somebody else. And in a weird, almost perfect full circle moment, that’s the whole life thing that I touched on at the start, returning again. Life has a lot to do with the records that Coheed makes.

The Father Of Make Believe is out now via Virgin Music Group.