Coheed and Cambria - In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (Review: The Chief)

I seem to have noticed that on every Prog Rock album I have listened to in the past, there has been a section where we hear a phone being dialled or ringing. Prog Rockers clearly find this an exciting sound...Sadly, I dont.

It was a cold and rainy summer evening at Sonisphere when I first experienced Coheed and Cambria without laughing at the high pitchedness of Claudio Sanchez's voice. The second they stepped onto the stage they had me entranced, I thought this couldn't be the same band that I brushed off simply because I thought the vocals were a bit funny? Anyway, I'm glad I didn't decide to see Heaven & Hell in the rain instead otherwise. After this I pretty much only listened to Welcome Home and Ten Speed so I'm really glad that Dan decided to put them up.

The album starts with a nice little instrumental that makes a kind of epic orchestral sound, this initial epicness is certainly something that is kept up throughout the album. I have found that sounding epic is a very integral part of Coheed's sound especially as all of their albums essentially is the epic of two people called Coheed and Cambria. But what I especially like about 'Heed is that the listener doesn't need to understand the story line to enjoy the album, to be honest I have no idea what's going on in terms of plot, and this is something that other concept album bands like Maiden can not seem to do. With many Maiden songs I can't really enjoy them if I don't like the concept Dickinson is whining about. I feel that Heebria manage to do this successfully because of a combination of two things: Claudio's voice (which I know thoroughly enjoy) and the brilliant musicianship of the band as a whole, not to mention the pretty tight production. All this allows the band to really show emotion in their songs that can get the audience really into the music (as I witnessed first hand at Sonisphere).

Another aspect of the album and the band as a whole that I enjoy is the combination of genres. Pinning down a band to a genre is always something I (quite sadly) enjoy doing and while its simple enough to call 'Bria a prog rock band it is clear that they are influenced by many other genres. As I've already implied there is a clear Iron Maiden influence (and honestly they do what Maiden do better than Maiden do) but also some punk-popish influences, even some mid-west nineties emo (which is a huge plus) and they manage this while still being able to be very catchy. Overall I just find this band fascinating, from the weirdness of their frontman to the interesting sound they make to the general concept of their albums.

What I've found with In Keeping Secrets is that it is generally much faster paced than Good Apollo which I like because on the latter I found a few of the tracks to be somewhat boring. This is something that Co-Cam have completely avoided on this album and frankly I like every single track it has to offer. I believe this album to be the second best release of the year 2003, second only to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief. 5/5