Coheed and Cambria are in a contemplative mood, but that doesn’t stop them from deploying their trademark intricate guitar riffs and catchy choruses.
Coheed and Cambria return with the third record in their current five-album cycle, Vaxis III: The Father of Make Believe. It continues the ongoing story of a sci-fi savior, from his parents meeting to his childhood, and eventually, however, it will wrap up. As is customary for Coheed and Cambria, the songs don’t often tell the story directly. The lyrics squeeze it out in drips and drabs for the hardcore fans. Most listeners are likely content with the big riffs, choruses, and unique blend of progressive rock, metal, and punk the band have been putting out for most of the 21st century.
The frontman, guitarist, and songwriter Claudio Sanchez is in a contemplative mood this time. Many songs on The Father of Make Believe are concerned with endings, and death in particular. That’s apparent almost immediately. “Yesterday’s Lost” begins with a lonely piano theme, a Coheed and Cambria tradition. After a minute, though, a simple acoustic guitar replaces the piano. Sanchez’s first words are, “If this life ends early / Would I have spent our time right?”
Lyrically Sanchez continues to reflect on the potential death of a loved one while the guitar stays in its simple mode. However, orchestral instruments bounce around in the background, filling the song in various ways. The song ends with the declaration, “Should you go before me, you know / I don’t want you to go.”
From this melancholy start, “Goodbye Sunshine” is an upbeat rocker with excellent guitar flourishes from Travis Stever and a passionate vocal performance from Sanchez. Drummer Josh Eppard’s fills are ear-catching, perfectly sitting in the spaces between the riffing. Sanchez insists during the pre-chorus, “Things are gonna be alright / Even though they may seem hard at first sight” and it sounds like a complete mood shift.
That lasts until the bright singalong chorus, when Sanchez drops the hammer: “Goodbye Sunshine / I’ll be the first in line / Here at your wake / Celebrating the good times.” Sanchez can always pull off a catchy hard rock track or two like this on every record, and “Goodbye Sunshine” is a standout on The Father of Make Believe, even with its funeral celebration theme.
The power ballad “Meri of Merci” also revisits these themes, with a chorus that pleads, “Meri, I’m not gonna quit / Until I can see / The end of this life / With you there beside me.” However, it’s a tribute to his recently passed grandparents. Sanchez put them into his story as the main characters of the group’s Afterman albums. The track is another winner, with a tender piano melody, a passionate vocal performance, and a massive, loud chorus. Eppard’s irregular kick drum beat drives the song, keeping the track just a little off-balance and allowing the chorus to hit harder when he switches to a more straightforward beat.
The acoustic love song “Corner My Confidence” is a change of subject but no less contemplative. It’s sweet and tender, with minimal ornamentation. Sanchez doesn’t do full acoustic ballads very often, but this is right up there with the Coheed classic “Wake Up” in quality. It also features bassist Zach Cooper on what sure sounds like an upright bass, which would be a first for the band.
That’s not all that’s happening with The Father of Make Believe. There are plenty of big, noisy hard rock songs and a few even have little twists on their sound, something not easy once a band gets to their 11th record. “Searching for Tomorrow” has a laser beam-toned guitar riff overlaid with a second, continually ascending second guitar riff. Besides a catchy chorus between the riffs, the song also features a thick, heavy bridge with a heavily distorted guitar solo.
The lead single “Blind Side Sonny” is uncharacteristically brief and confrontational. Musically it sits somewhere between punk, thrash metal, and hardcore, with a simple groovy guitar riff driving it. Sanchez shouts through the lyrics, going to a full-on scream in the refrain, “Blood! We want blood! We want blood!” It’s a shot of adrenaline that’s an odd choice for a single, but works well in its place midway through the record.
The track ends with a brief 1990s-style breakbeat that blends right into “Play the Poet”, maybe the record’s biggest misstep. Those breakbeats combine with Sanchez rapping the verses and pre-chorus before getting to a more singable refrain. It even features a detuned breakdown as its bridge. While this sound differs for Coheed and Cambria, it’s possibly too many things simultaneously. It sounds like a lost heavy rock track from 2004, when many rock groups were still trying to navigate the end of nu-metal and the rise of dubstep.
The title track has almost the opposite problem; it’s too familiar: a mid-tempo rocker that resembles an assortment of previous Coheed songs, particularly 2010 single, “Here We Are Juggernaut”. It also has an annoying ongoing background vocal that repeats, “Nah ni nah ni nah ni”, most likely to echo the nursery rhyme style of the “make believe” theme. Lyrically, Sanchez leans hard on the idea that he, as the long-running storyteller of the band, isn’t always comfortable with that role. “I’m the vision that you choose to see / The one you can love or hate as you need.” That’s not new for Sanchez, as he’s long struggled with how much his lyrics tell a story and how much of it is personal songwriting.
The final chunk of The Father of Make Believe closes out with a four-part suite, another familiar Coheed tactic. Sanchez has settled into putting most of the storytelling action into these often more prog-rock oriented suites. Just beforehand, though, there’s another single, the ebullient “Someone Who Can”. Bright guitars, shimmering synths, and driving, processed drums all recall 1980s rock. The band also dipped back into the 1980s, quite successfully, for several tracks on their previous album, The Window of the Waking Mind. Sanchez’s lightest, most upbeat ideas work exceptionally well in the context of one of popular music’s most upbeat periods.
As for the suite, it’s mostly business as usual for the band. “Welcome to Forever, Mr. Nobody” is a muscular, hard-hitting song that winds its way around to a triumphant finish. “The Flood” is bombastic, chugging along effectively over its twisty six minutes-plus running time. “Tethered Together” is a little more tense, with memorable piano and acoustic guitar lines. It’s only on the final track, “So it Goes”, that things perk up.
“So It Goes” is driven by a bouncy, driving backbeat and piano and guitar lines supporting that bounce. It’s not the first time Coheed and Cambria have gotten bouncy, but it’s rare and draws the listener in. There’s even a recurring harpsichord motif, which helps give the whole song an orchestral pop sound. It feels like the band’s take on Panic at the Disco’s “Nine in the Afternoon”, a very effective Beatles pastiche.
The Father of Make Believe is a solid release for Coheed and Cambria. They have enough juice in their wheelhouse to add strong tracks to their extensive catalog. Sanchez is trying a few new things here and even if they don’t all work it’s good to hear him making the effort. It’s odd to listen to them lyrically dwelling on the nature of death so much smack dab in the middle of a five-album run, but that’s where Sanchez is now. Plus the Vaxis story is reaching a crossroads here, but that’s for the fans who go deep on the lore to puzzle out.