GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
Oftentimes, when a band makes a major-label debut after two successful albums on smaller labels, the major-label product is watered down to gain more listeners and money.
That’s not the case with Coheed and Cambria’s third album “Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Volume I: From Fear through the Eyes of Madness.” If anything, Coheed has become more experimental with “Good Apollo.”
Long known for lead singer Claudio Sanchez’s incredible range, Coheed has built a dynamic sound that includes a mix of pop rock, metal, indie and punk, all without ever being confined to a single genre. But what makes Coheed rise above other bands of the same ilk is that its albums are the soundtrack to a sci-fi story penned by Sanchez.
“Good Apollo” is the first half of the two-part final album in the series.
Coheed’s debut album, “The Second Stage Turbine Blade” is meant to be the second album in the series once all the albums are finished, and the second released album, “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3,” is the third album in the series.
In “Good Apollo,” the band takes a break from following the characters in the story and looks at some of the things going on in the writer’s life while authoring the story.
Just as in the first two albums, the band progresses musically by leaps and bounds. However, the level of production in “Good Apollo” is on a totally different level. Every guitar stroke is heard, every snare drum is crisp and Sanchez’s vocals ring through with a clarity unattained in either “Turbine Blade” or “Keeping Secrets.”
The production also hurts this album. Too often, the listener must sit through synthesized space effects before getting to the actual song on each track. Fortunately, the music on the album saves the production.
Many familiar sounds accompany the new songs as the listener is greeted with a melancholy version of the Coheed and Cambria theme with the first track. Because the album is written from the perspective of the author of the story and includes flashbacks from earlier in the story, the band is given a lot of liberty to reference its other albums throughout the new songs.
The first single off the new album, the Led Zeppelin-esque “Welcome Home,” is the band’s musical apex with screaming guitars accompanying soaring vocals and a crowd-pleasing chant near the end.
The band doesn’t slow down until “Wake Up” a near-lullaby that is followed up by the most radio-friendly song on the album, “The Suffering.”
From there, the band finishes the album in spectacular fashion with a four-track series titled “The Willing Well.” Each song in the series is more than seven minutes long and each is more dynamic than the one before. The fourth song in the series and the last song on the album, “The Final Cut” includes some of the coolest guitar work on the entire album and even finishes with a short folksy banjo piece.
In all, the album is a solid effort and a logical next step for Coheed and Cambria. Unfortunately, the overzealous production kills some of the momentum of the music and makes “Good Apollo” an uneasy listen at times. The album is worth purchasing, but diehard Coheed fans will find it’s easier to fast forward through many of the intros rather than listen to them.
09-22-2005
