In the beginning of the 21st century, I was in a post hardcore band with some high school friends. The three of us had some pretty different tastes–I had a strong bias toward melodic emo like Further Seems Forever and the Juliana Theory, Travis’ tastes were for almost purely punk bands like Flogging Molly and Against Me, and Seth had a soft spot for nu-metal a mile wide. But there was one album that none of us could get enough of: In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 by Coheed and Cambria. This disc joined Thrice’s Artist in the Ambulance and Thursday’s War All the Time to form the triumvirate of albums we all played on repeat.

But this record was and remains a strange beast. A few minutes shy of 80 minutes, IKSoSE3 is an absolutely massive album, culling its source material from a comic book written by falsettoed-frontman Claudio Sanchez, whose massive head of curly hair told of the band’s love of epic hair metal. And there’s tons of that here–flaming guitar solos weave effortlessly through Sabbath-tinged tracks that flirt shamelessly with prog.

And while Coheed would delve deeper into prog-metal (to their detriment), here, they are entirely aware that no track is complete without a really great pop hook. Even the darkest tracks here have great ear worms that demand singalongs (see Camper Velorium III’s catchy chorus, “when I kill her, I’ll have her. Die white girls, die white girls”). And that’s not to say anything of the outright pop tracks like Blood Red Summer and A Favor House Atlantic, which haven’t aged a day in eleven years (I feel so old).

But it’s not all prog metal pop songs. This record wouldn’t have half of its emotional heft if it weren’t for Coheed’s masterful sense of scope, through which they conjure epic masterpieces like the title track and Zeppelin-esque closer The Light and the Glass. And while its easy to criticize Coheed for being over-ambitious and heavy-handed, that’s kind of the point. But even at their most serious, Coheed doesn’t forget to have fun. Not on this album, at least.