Record #758: Coheed & Cambria – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 2: No World For Tomorrow (2007)

Coheed & Cambria attracts a lot of criticism for their… whole deal. Sci-fi prog rock concept albums based on a comic book written by the lead singer who then sings about genetic wars and space armadas in an androgynous elf voice isn’t exactly a recipe for mainstream success. But at their best, Coheed has a gift for wrapping these weirder elements up in sugary sweet pop hooks and classic rock tropes.

This mystical ability to mix prog and pop made me a massive fan of their first three albums, but every time I’ve dug into their later works, it seemed they leaned far too heavily into their more experimental compositions, neglecting the earworms entirely. But after finally acquiring a copy of their stunning debut, I learned that I had entirely missed their fourth album, No World For Tomorrow, which might actually be their hookiest, catchiest, classic-rockiest album ever.

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Record #757: Coheed and Cambria – Second Stage Turbine Blade (2002)

Looking back, it makes no sense that Coheed and Cambria was ever lumped in with the early 2000s emo/post-hardcore/pop-punk scene.  Sure, they were members of the Equal Vision Records roster and shared a number of tours with scene mainstays like Thursday, The Used, and Further Seems Forever. They were even a fixture of Warped Tour for several years.

But musically, they have far more in common with bands like Rush and Led Zeppelin (to whom Coheed was compared by Guitar World on the advent of their sophomore album) than Sunny Day Real Estate or Jimmy Eat World. If Coheed was emo, it was by the most tenuous definitions of the term.

But that doesn’t change the fact that this was one of the most important albums of my emo phase.

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Record #286: Coheed and Cambria – In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (2003)

Record #286: Coheed and Cambria - In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (2003) 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...

 

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.

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