Despite enduring a year full of member defections and a new CD that marks a distinct end, the members of Coheed and Cambria are just getting started.
Last week the four-piece released their fourth record Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow. The album is the final volume in a multi-record, many-layered science fiction epic involving the murder of the main characters – Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon – and their son’s quest to fulfill his destiny as the universe’s messiah, which could possibly lead to the destruction of the fictional solar system.
“It feels like closure,” bassist Mic Todd says. “You know one of those movies that like have an ending, or a finale, that leaves it so f—ing open for something better to come, or something more to come? That’s what this feels like.”
In addition to the end of the saga, No World For Tomorrow is the beginning of a personal new era for the band. Last year Todd and drummer Josh Eppard departed from the band for personal reasons, leaving lead vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Claudio Sanchez and guitarist Travis Stever to regroup.
While Todd eventually rejoined the band, Chris Pennie – formerly of the Dillinger Escape Plan – has permanently replaced Eppard. “He’s not a step down at all. He’s a step to the side, a little bit,” Todd says of the new dynamic Pennie has brought to the band, adding that he feels himself “improving every month with Chris.”
No World For Tomorrow also continues a constant musical evolution for Coheed and Cambria. Their first record The Second Stage Turbine Blade, released five years ago, emerged from the then blooming indie and emo scene and was full of high-pitched vocals and punk rock guitars.
Though Sanchez’s impossibly high, near castrato wail has remained in full effect on every CD since then – 2003’s In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, 2005’s Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness and now No World For Tomorrow.
The musical styling has moved solidly into a classic rock, neo-progressive sound. The current Coheed and Cambria sounds more like Rush than it does former contemporaries Thursday and Taking Back Sunday.
“It’s just a natural progression,” Todd says. “This album is different from the last album, as that one was from the last, and so forth.”
With the story coming to a close, the big question now is what happens next.
“We’re gonna make records one way or another, under the name Coheed and Cambria,” Todd says.
He was, however, vague about the future of Sanchez’s fictional worlds.
“It could be another story. It could be no story at all. It could be a whole other thing,” Todd says, referring to the conceptual element of the band. “From the concept point of view, I think Claudio’s pretty open to a lot of things.”
While Coheed has certainly endured a world of change in the past several years, they appear to be here to stay.
Todd, however, comments that they could “disband and start a new band with the same members.”
In any case, it seems that the title of their latest endeavor is not prophetic: For Coheed and Cambria, there certainly is a world for tomorrow.
Medill freshman Ben Geier is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
