COHEED AND CAMBRIA take us inside the rebooted Amory Wars.
Just when we thought Coheed And Cambria had abandoned their Amory Wars saga forever, they’ve released an incredible new chapter. Claudio Sanchez explains why their story is far from over…
They say familiarity breeds contempt; that a change can do you good. You suspect Coheed And Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez agrees. We last spoke to him in 2015, before the band released their excellent eighth record, The Color
Before The Sun. It stepped away from The Amory Wars concept that had been their calling card for their entire career, even spawning a grand narrative and a comic book series, and instead told a personal story about Claudio. He had found himself going through “a real identity crisis”, intensified by the news his wife was pregnant, which made him question what kind of father he would be. Then he was plunged into a bizarre scenario in which rogue tenants had turned his family home in the country into a cannabis farm. The Claudio Sanchez we met that day was pensive, openly emotional and unsure about the situation he found himself in.
“I wrote The Color Before The Sun because I was about to be a dad, and I wanted to express those feelings on a record without the disguise of a concept,” he explains today. “I felt like, going forward, my son would influence me, and influence things that would happen in The Amory Wars – but I was never going to feel those feelings again. So it was important for me to step outside of the concept and document them. And if I was ever going to do that, this felt like the most profound moment to do it.”
The Claudio Sanchez of 2018 is a changed man, appearing happier, friendlier and more at ease. He’s settled with his family in Brooklyn, and Coheed And Cambria have returned to The Amory Wars story for their ninth album, The Unheavenly Creatures. It not only picks up the elaborate saga he’s devoted his life to, but sees a return to the more progressive elements that were less present on The Color Before
The Sun – without sacrificing any of the huge, stadium-sized choruses that made that record so irresistible. It is essentially an album that helps them transition into a place where the majority of their fans would want them to be, as Claudio tacitly acknowledges.
“When Coheed decided to announce that we were doing a record outside of The Amory Wars, of course, it’s going to be met with resistance,” he concedes, reluctant to be drawn any further. “What I really appreciate about Coheed’s fanbase is the patience that they have with us. They have a real understanding that we have to do what we need to do; they’re very accepting.
The Color Before The Sun might not be their favourite record, but there is this understanding between us that we’re not here to ostracise our audience. Because we are our audience.”
Claudio’s previously spoken about how it’s easier to hide away in The Amory Wars and express his feelings in metaphors, rather than in literal terms, which is why The Color
Before The Sun was such an anomaly. Today, it’s obvious that he’s much more comfortable talking about the characters on the new album than about himself. This time around, those characters are star-crossed lovers Nostrand (AKA Creature) and Nia (codename Sister Spider), who are stuck in a planetary prison. Once he’d decided to revisit the series, it didn’t take him long to get into his fantasy headspace and start plotting their fate.
“It was like slipping into an old hat, or whatever the analogy is!” he laughs. “I started this record around February 2016, and for me it just takes finding that right song that can fit into the concept and universe of The Amory Wars, and we’re away. You have to able to visualise where you’re going to be able to take the story from just one kernel. When I wrote Old Flames, which is the second-to-last song on the album, I ‘saw’ the visuals you see on the cover, of the sister and spider embracing. When the chorus came in, it felt like this really grandiose ending.”
And if you, like Claudio himself, feel that concentrating on The Amory Wars represents the sweet spot for
Coheed And Cambria, then you’re in luck. Their grandiosity extends to the whole story arc, which they’ve mapped out as a pentalogy – five parts across five albums.
“I have the titles of each record, and the aim of the characters ultimately for each story,” he tells us. “So, if you think of The Force Awakens, what’s the big moment? Han Solo dies. In my mind, I have the big moment for each character in each story. So slowly, I’m developing as I go, and this one just really teases a lot of the very important characters that are coming. The story is ultimately called Vaxis, which is the name of the couple’s unborn son of the future, who’s trying to contact them…”
Intriguing, involving and full of hidden layers, it’s everything we’ve come to expect from Coheed, and amazing to think of the niche they’ve created over the past 16 years. A band who were initially lumped in with the nascent emo scene, who have ended up as singular-minded, post-prog, science-fiction authors. Those early days playing with the likes of Underoath and Thursday can’t have been easy, yet Claudio is again keen to highlight the positives.
“I appreciate all of those moments – it’s brought us where we are today,” he says. “If someone from [New York “IT’S FULL,OF BIG MOMENTS LIKE HAN SOLO’S DEATH IN THE FORCE AWAKENS” record label] Equal Vision hadn’t taken a chance on us and found something they liked about it, that would have been it. I’m very grateful, and I feel that a lot of it had to do with timing. If we hadn’t found that space at that time, it wouldn’t have been accepted easily, and it’s a unique situation that people managed to gravitate toward us.”
Doing things on their own terms, steadfastly sticking to their concept no matter what, they’ve managed to take progressive, challenging music to a wider audience. “That’s really nice of you to say,” grins Claudio. “But I can’t see where Coheed fit objectively. I’m not sure if we’ve had a hand in making that stuff move along quicker, or if we’ve changed the climate at all.
But it feels good; it feels really nice.”
And with that, he once again lights up with contentment, the sighing and furrowed brows a thing of the past.
THE UNHEAVENLY CREATURES IS OUT NOW VIA ROADRUNNER. THE BOX SET INCLUDES AN 88-PAGE HARDCOVER NOVEL, A ‘CREATURE’ MASK, A POSTER AND A BONUS DEMO CD