Coheed and Cambria – ‘The Colour Before the Sun’

Concept albums. Typically, if unfairly, seen as the last resort of a band low on ideas but high on many, many other things, the very words set off alarm bells despite having given the world such gems as ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘American Idiot’ and the first, second, third, fourth, sixth and seventh records by New York’s Coheed and Cambria. Oh, ‘Year of the Black Rainbow’ happened, but so did Season 4 of ‘Community’ so we’re happy to write it off as a “gas leak” album if you are.

What happens, though, when a band’s entire career is based on the very thing that for many other acts signals the beginning of the end? For Claudio Sanchez and co, of course, the answer is obvious: the exact opposite. After seven albums set in the sprawling, multimedia world of The Amory Wars, Coheed and Cambria have come back down to Earth.

“Every word I say I truly mean”, Sanchez sings on ‘Here to Mars’. And for the first time in his career, it’s true. This isn’t some Pitchforkian lyrical analysis either; by the band’s own admission ‘The Color Before the Sun’ marks the first time they’ve abandoned characters, concepts and – in a way – Coheed and Cambria themselves, the band being named for two of the characters within the fictional world built up over more than a decade.

It’s an album of firsts in other ways, too. It’s the first time Coheed have tracked live, and the first time the band’s rhythm section have had the opportunity to play together prior to recording. There’s no need to rehash their membership dramas here but suffice to say that prior to 2012/3’s ‘The Afterman’ albums, drummer Josh Eppard was returning from a lengthy absence and bassist Zach Cooper joined during the recording process.

Both ‘Descension’ and ‘Ascension’ were wonderful records – particularly following the aforementioned rainbow-related aural trainwreck – but there was something missing, something hard to define. It’s back now, though. The double-shred attack presented by Sanchez and Travis Steever is always beyond reproach, but here Cooper and Eppard have had the opportunity to lock into each other’s playing and the result is the return of the kind of melodic grooves which made Coheed a favourite among both prog-rock musos as well as punk rock miscreants.

Witness Cooper’s effortlessly spiralling bass on the incredible ‘Here to Mars’, surely one of the best, heaviest pop songs of 2015, or the languid and distorted stop-start rhythms of ‘Young Love’. There are riffs, there are ballads and arguably there are few surprises but it’s executed with passion, precision and the energy of a band who don’t have anything left to prove but to themselves.

Where ‘The Colour Before the Sun’ is at its best is when the band let their poppier side loose – opener ‘Island’, with its acoustic major chords and pop-punk dynamics, may irk fans of the band’s more technical material; the early Summer release date of lead-off single ‘You Got Spirit, Kid’ was hugely apt for its 70s pop-rock dynamics. And it’s no coincidence that both of these songs are followed by brief instrumental prog-outs, as if to say “Look, guys, we can still play like this – we’re just choosing not to”.

We have our suspicions that this album will divide Coheed’s fiercely loyal but opinionated fanbase, but we love it. For many bands, facing middle age with young families in tow so often drains the creative forces which made them such a draw in the first place. With ‘The Colour Before the Sun’ Coheed and Cambria prove that sometimes, the greatest creative concept is life itself.

ROB BARBOUR