posted 11/08/2005 (Tue) @ 07:05 pm
>>> Music Reviews
Coheed & Cambria - Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness (2005)
Star Wars meets Harry Potter meets Rush meets The Used
- Keeping The Blade
- Always & Never
- Welcome Home
- Ten Speed (Of God’s Blood & Burial)
- Crossing The Frame
- Apollo I : The Writing Writer
- Once Upon Your Dead Body
- Wake Up
- The Suffering
- The Lying Lies & Dirty Secrets of Miss Erica Court
- Mother May I
- The Willing Well I: Fuel for the Feeding End
- The Willing Well II: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness
- The Willing Well III: Apollo II: The Telling Truth
- The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut
What do Star Wars, Harry Potter, Rush, The Used, and Coheed and Cambria have in common? They’re all cultural phenomenons of varying cult status that, as much as many people would like them to, will most likely never go away. Furthermore, no matter how derivative, compromising, unoriginal or terrible any of them… become… there will always be a dedicated cult fanbase ready to lap it up, even if George makes Luke scream like a bitch when he’s falling off the precipice on Cloud City on Bespin and replaces the lightsabers with walkie talkies. Even if Dumbledore dies on page 596. Even if that guy literally vomits sometimes when he sings.
“Welcome Home,” the first single, is, for all practical purposes, a Metallica “S&M” outtake with a very castrated James Hetfield on vocals. Lead licks fly in all directions like Robert Smith’s hair, anchored down by a leaden string section pounding down triplets with the rhythm guitar like shots of osmium. (In terms of atomic weight, that’s the densest element on the periodic table. Neato, huh?)
The acoustic moments don’t suit Coheed and Cambria in the way it surely was imagined they would. After the ubiquitous “Blade” motif that has opened all three Coheed records subsides, we’re ready for some rock, but we get “Always & Never.” Alas! Furthermore, why do rock bands routinely name the sleepiest lullabies they can write things like “Wake Up”? It’s only fuel for jerks like me.
For as much as the comic book tie-in backstory is touted, Coheed and Cambria lyrics are so charmingly vague that the listener, oblivious to all but the wordy album title, could just as easily paint “Good Apollo” as the soundtrack to a rodent escaping from a gay man’s intestinal tract as they could envision a fantastic space opera… not that this in itself is a new trend — nearly all modern rock bands are either painfully obvious or unresolvably obtuse in all things lyrical.
Good thing we’re all about the music. In terms of energy, “Good Apollo” wipes the floor with both of Coheed’s previous efforts fairly solidly. Where “In Keeping Secrets” lacked occasionally in the “rock” department in order to favor tightly-interwoven clean prog guitar, this record finds a nice balance between the poppy headbob of past tracks like “Blood Red Summer” and the sub-shoegazer metal of “The Crowing,” featuring lots of harmonic interplay from both guitar and multi-tracked vocals.
Not a brilliant record in MY book, but their best so far. And of course, since when did my opinion matter? You… want this, don’t you?
Tags: concept albums, hard rock, metal, vocalists
