Live Review: Coheed & Cambria, Circa Survive

Circa Survive certainly proved the ability to draw an audience. A perfect foil to Coheed & Cambria's well-weaved storytelling – indeed they've often been tour buddies – Anthony Green's voice is on a high register to match Coheed's Claudio Sanchez. But they lack the compelling songwriting needed to grasp the lukewarm listener, the vocal melodies providing only one disarming layer rather than rugged, undulating textures. Still, you could appreciate why their driving, melodic songs can capture the easily satiated live.

You can probably earn a degree in The Amory Wars – a storyline that spans Coheed & Cambria's seven albums to date; latest albums The Afterman: Ascension and Descension are like The Silmarillion of Coheed's Lord of the Rings. But, as ever, the recently reshuffled New York quartet disposed of prose and fourth wall-crushing narratives to focus on melodies, riffs, lyrics and even some classic rock posturing like Sanchez's riotous hair and playing guitars with teeth. The multi-octave vocals of Sanchez and the elemental force of their Floyd via Zeppelin/Maiden thrash were still the centrepiece.

The Metro is a relatively intimate venue for Coheed & Cambria these days, and helped give The Afterman a decent hearing. New songs took up half of the hour-long set and the sold-out Metro audibly and physically embraced this fresh chapter. The success might also have been because nothing much has really changed. It's all still Sanchez's Geddy Lee-like voice, riffs blending the familiar and future, and songs stretched beyond the five-minute mark offering a journey akin to a graphic novel with slick artwork. So reactions remained strong: fists pumped into the air, yelled militaristic chants and choral singing.

With a furious performance of Welcome Home from 2007's Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness, solos were strewn across synapses, snapping them like dead wood. There was no better way to conclude a glimpse into Coheed & Cambria's tale of 78 worlds wrapped in a 'keywork' of trapped souls.