Coheed And Cambria quadruple live!

Coheed And Cambria
Rivieria, Chicago
Tuesday, October 28-31, 2008

Coheed And Cambria have always gone big. From overly pretentious album titles (Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness) to sprawling nine-minute epics, the group has continually aspired toward the ambitious and grandiose. Thus, it was hardly surprising when Coheed announced not one or even two, but four nights in a row to properly display that ambition.

The group hit Chicago as one of four cities on their limited Neverender tour, which found them performing an album per night, in order of release. Yet, just as much as the run proved to be a celebration of the outfit’s catalogue, it also served as a showcase for the story within their music. Throughout every Coheed album, frontman Claudio Sanchez has narrated the tale of the group’s titular leads in a dense, cryptic, and sprawling sci-fi space opera. At least as much as the band itself, the story has always been the source of Sanchez’s passion. Demonstrated together, both elements represented the culmination of the complete Coheed experience.

As a whole, Neverender proved light on surprises but rife with revelations. Night after night, Coheed stuck to the script, remaining faithful to tracklists and rarely venturing into uncharted territory. While the reasoning for such a move was understandable, it left little in the way of unpredictability. Yet, while they avoided any Shyamalan-esque surprises, the run’s straightforward presentation only served to showcase Coheed’s surprising growth as a live act. The outfit have always put an emphasis on the experience, but have never achieved this level of power as a live unit. Sanchez and guitarist Travis Stever, especially, have matured remarkably, as the pair alternated between a bevy of enhanced and showy styles. The duo rarely let an opportunity escape to interject surprisingly skillful shredding, blues and prog-tinged solos, and immeasurably bone-crushing jagged riffs into already enlivened performances. Sanchez even took to playing briefly with his teeth for “On The Brink.”

Of course, such excelled maturation didn’t go unnoticed by the crowd. Filled night after night with Coheed diehards, the residency’s audience was far from passive, instead opting to play an active role in the experience. Each night’s more anthemic and dramatic moments often found the crowd uniting in fervent chants and thrusting arms, like in Tuesday night’s encore of In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth 3‘s title track. One fan even went so far as to figure out how to make the group’s Keywork logo (don’t ask), with his hands, throwing what has to be the geekiest hand symbol ever.

Oftentimes, the room’s enthusiasm was justified. Neverender night two focused on Silent Earth 3, itself still Coheed’s premiere accomplishment. The performance saw the full realization of the 2003 album, as well as the realized potential of Coheed as a band. Throughout the evening, Sanchez’s concept was front and center in focused and razor-sharp songwriting, spread over tuneful melodies and sweeping epics. From the massive buildup and chugging guitars of “The Crowing” to a deafening version of Silent Earth hidden track/Rush in-joke “2113.” By comparison, “The Light And The Glass” came across intimate and personal, prompting tuneful crowd chants of “liar, liar” and the mournful plea of “pray for us all” over fiery, spiraling riffs.

Not every night fired on all cylinders, however, as was the case Tuesday when the band revisited their 2002 debut, The Second Stage Turbine Blade. A record that, live, is too muscular to be proper emo but too sci-fi and prog to be active rock. More than anything, the album hinted at the potential of Coheed’s future material, often resulting in more bluster than song. Yet, what the evening’s fare lacked in focus the outfit made up for in performance. Case in point, the group brought a sense of assuredness not present on record to “Hearshot Kid Disaster,” while “IRO-Bot” showcased a sparser side, building up with drums and repeating keyboards.

It was an approach utilized again two nights later for 2005’s From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness. The show offered glimpses into more expansive and expressive material but later suffered under the weight of its own pretension. The stripped-down “Always And Never” and emotionally vulnerable “Wake Up,” easily Coheed’s most vulnerable offerings, offered a respite from so much of the evening’s expanse. The songs also allowed the crooning Sanchez more expressive vocal opportunities, with both cuts enhanced by two female backing vocalists who at every other turn were all but drowned out. Unfortunately, the group’s predilection towards the epic and pretentious would work against them as the performance played out. When they moved to Madness‘s massive four-part closing opera, “The Willing Well,” Sanchez’s vision all but threatened to collapse into itself. Not especially tuneful, engaging, or remarkable, the span of songs devolved into a tedious stretch of self-indulgence unable to justify itself. While Sanchez’s vision and scope has often set Coheed apart from lesser bands and worked to the group’s advantage, the “Willing Well” cuts proved their work far from infallible, and better in vindicable doses.

Thankfully, Coheed made up for all missteps and then some on the final night . While No World For Tomorrow isn’t the group’s watershed moment, the outfit’s passion and soul was undeniably intertwined throughout the entirety of the evening’s songs. One of which, the tragic and bitter “Mother Superior,” built around Sanchez as he delivered lines like “grow up and be a man” with absolute conviction. Later, the band further atoned for the previous evening’s closing and fared far better Tomorrow‘s five-part(!) closing epic, “The End Complete.” Midway through, a brief instrumental interlude out of “The End Complete” segued dramatically and effectively into a heavy and menacing “The Road And The Damned,” itself easily the evening’s most mournful, crushed, and longing performance. Yet rather than end on a dour note, the group went out as an unapologetic inferno with the story’s final chapter, “On The Brink.” As fans chanted verses, Sanchez smiled before himself belting out a mighty crow, while the band traipsed through smokey blues before collapsing in an apocalyptic explosion leading into a titanic ending as the stage’s screens simply read “The end.”

– Jaime de’Medici

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly