Coheed and Cambria - In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3

Coheed and Cambria
In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
Equalvision Records
Grade: A

A phone call, some steps, a voice then a crash of orchestration starts off Coheed and Cambria's second album and second in their trilogy. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 blows away almost anything you have heard recently (save the Mars Volta) and make you redefine what great music really is. For the first three weeks I had this album I couldn't stop listening to it. I listened to it at least several times a day. A day couldn't go by without listening to Coheed. I had to find all the minute parts, how they swerved and intertwined and how to unpack all of the packing became some type of mission.

Coheed formed several years back in the stretch of land between Albany and NYC in order to rock your socks off by bridging worlds of rock to create a unique product. They were signed after providing a bunch of demos to EVR and EVR finally deciding to take a shot with this foursome of prog-rock, emo, metal amalgamation. Coheed and Cambria are the lead characters in a sci-fi epic devised by lead singer/guitarist Claudio Sanchez and realized by Sanchez, drummer Joshua Eppard, bassist Michael Todd and guitarist/vocals Travis Stever. Their first album The Second Stage Turbine Blade (Equalvision Records, 2002) was Coheed's proper introduction to the music world - though the second part of their epic. That album received extreme praise and placed them on the map as being one of the coolest bands in the indie world. Yet In Keeping was almost never made. While touring in support of Second Stage, Coheed had a bit of blow up and were on the verge of breaking up. After band therapy and the realization they are awesome, they came together to tour some more and knock out even better tracks for In Keeping.

Ideally, Coheed have said they would like to see the story put into a comic form - though that may not be hot enough from my point of view. A better step would be to an animated story with the music as the soundtrack. If done right, there is little doubt that Oscar will come knocking - well maybe not, but he should.

Like Second Turbine, In Keeping is an epic affair with Sanchez's hypnotic and unique singing coupled with spectacular dual-guitar work, sweet harmonies and some pounding for good measure. Though In Keeping has cleaner and tighter production that only enhances your listening enjoyment. Revealing part of the motivation, Sanchez is quoted about the album stating "this sequel is based around a premonition that a character in the story has in a dream, that slowly turns into a nightmare." Besides from the thick orchestration, probably the first thing that hits you is Sanchez's vocals - comparisons abound of Geddy Lee from Rush joining an emo-core band. But Geddy was never this cool. More importantly, Sanchez has some real talent and ability that is sorely missed in the indie world. Imagine taking all these fools singing in lame-ass pop and mainstream rock groups (I'm taking about the ones that have real vocal talent), injecting them with cool and putting them in a band with passion, intensity and a driving force. The result is Coheed and Cambria. The second thing that strikes you is the phenomenal guitar work. The lead guitar is almost always performing some type of soloing or joining the other in heavy riff-rock. When Coheed matches lead guitar timing and harmonies with vocals it is down-right heavenly (e.g., the end of "Three Evils (Embodied in Love and Shadow)").

As is noted above, In Keeping starts off with a phone ringing, a woman answering, and orchestration (which sounds like some of the music from the video game Max Payne) on "The Ring in Return." Towards the end of the "The Ring in Return" there is a rocket taking off or flying past and male voice saying "Well, Apolo, where should I begin." Then there is the issuance of music as the second song "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth:3" pumps through the speakers. The track starts out slow with guitar meandering on a riff before drums and feedback come in. About forty seconds in, the band throws down with a powerful explosion and some tidbits to sample of what the next eight minutes is about to bring you. See, that's the thing with Coheed. All of the songs are great, epic affairs. But you have to listen to the WHOLE song, not a couple seconds here and there, to full appreciate what is going on. So if I play this for you, I can't just say check this small part out; I'll lend you the disk and then you are hooked and will buy ten for your family. As one of the best tracks on the record, the title track grabs you buy the throat with the vocal and musical intensity of the chorus: "Man your own jackhammer/Man your battle stations/We'll have you dead pretty soon/Sincerely written from my brother's blood machine/Man your battle station/We'll have you home pretty soon." And when you think that track has ended after six minutes, it circles back and their many-member chorus of "oh-ah" (dubbed Two-Tone Tony's Pirate Glee Club) and some more throw down on the chorus. Right, so that is the first real track - fucking amazing!

This is followed by "Cuts Marked in the March of Men" and Sanchez telling the story in fairly straight forward manner. While jammed packed with riffs, it is not nearly as thick as "In Keeping..." - though it breaks about half-way through with some more harmony-laced music. "Three Evils (Embodied in Love and Shadow)" meanders through some upbeat music (though not lyrically), before getting to the final section that absolutely blows your mind away. Coheed builds with codas to get you there before finally pushing through to pure magic with vocals and the lead soloing guitar moving at the same metric while Sanchez sings "Dear my friends/In the time we spent forever after beyond this when you will our nightmare ever end?/ Pull the trigger and the nightmare stops" with the last line sung repeatedly. "The Crowing" is another song with thick riff-rock elements before some crazy guitar segments take over near the end. Yet again, though, Coheed come through with some serious punk harmonies at the very end of the six minute event. Coheed take a more alt-punk approach to "Blood Red Summer" with a hypnotically simple note guitar line. This is one of the few that everyone loves from word go - with its less abrasive and more standard approach to song structure. More importantly, it ends with "wha-oh-ohs" thrown around and the vocal pitch nearing girl scout troop levels. "The Camper Velourium I: Faint of Heart" starts out with guitars a la Santana with "who-cockoo-cho." At heart, this is another harmony driven song that includes guitar soloing in parts that would not be at of place with a more prog version of the big 70s guitar bands (e.g., Led Zeppelin). "The Camper Velourium II: Backend of Forever" and "The Camper Velourium III: Al The Killer" are not as hotastic but have their own elements of wonder - most notably the throw down at the end of II. This mini-trilogy sets up the poppiest track on the album "A Favor House Atlantic." This is some seriously good shit. Sanchez's vocals are at a higher pitch and the song hums along with a standard composition before you get smacked with the uber-catchy bridge and chorus: "Good eye sniper/I'll shoot you run//The words you scribbled on the walls/The loss of friends you didn't have/I'll call you when the time is right/Are you in or are out/For them all to know the end of us all." How this song wouldn't be able to melt any aversion to Coheed is beyond me. Coheed follow this up with the last track of the main section "The Light & The Glass." "The Light..." is very slow with acoustic guitars picking away for sometime before they come in with a powerful electric chorus of "Ignoring the words of your obnoxious little brother/Kill or be killed spilled the words from your mother/I'll lay awake for a while/I'll leave the light on a while." As with the previous tracks - and since the "The Light..." is almost ten minutes long - there is a plethora of sections with the song rounding out on crazy soloing and a choir (this one called Uncle Birmy's Dirty Foot Choir) of "Pray for us all," before some more Max Payne music. After a bunch of empty tracks, comes an untitled track that plays out like the rest of the tracks in ten mintues with heavy riffs, exquisite solos and rich composition. In addition, like the other songs, the bridge and chorus is powerful, catchy and impressive with Sanchez singing "When I fall asleep/Your face is all that I see...."

Coheed and Cambria is the best thing to happen to music in a long time. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 extends the epic mapped out on Second Turbine while crushing it to pieces. The amount of work that has gone into to this seventy-minute offering is baffling and in no doubt well worth the effort. It is just a matter of time, maybe minutes, before Coheed become absolutely huge and changes rock as we know it. Coheed as been playing shows this fall with Thrice, Thursday and Straylight Run. But just imagine a tour with Coheed and the Mars Volta - it would be fucking sunshine and butterflies abounding!