Coheed and Cambria have been touring Europe before heading to Australia, with the band progressing at a rapid pace – the crowd at the band’s shows is growing everywhere they go in Europe. In the UK they’ve been taken to heart, says guitarist Travis Stever,, almost to the point where it’s like it is in the States; the crowds have become that big.

He does admit that Europe is a different kettle of fish, with the band playing smaller club shows, but it still seems like the crowds are growing more and more for the band – prog rock is back with a vengeance, with Coheed and Cambria pulling really strong crowds in the likes of Germany and Switzerland. “We just basically cover as much of Europe as we can while we’re here,” he confirms.

The reaction to the band has been positive, with the wieldy titled Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV: Volume One From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (oh yes, they’re so prog it hurts) garnering plenty of critical acclaim and consistently strong sales. “They seem to be really into it from a rock stand point and as fans of music,” Travis says of the crowds. “The only way I can tell is that from being up on stage they seem to be really happy to be watching us.”

The record is a different beasts to their previous releases, upping the ante and attempting to position Coheed and Cambria as an ‘important’ band with a message to tell. But, Travis says, the band are simply eager to grow.

“It’s not like it’s really a change; it’s just a progression I guess. Everyone’s really coming into their own – one of the biggest things about this album is that everybody got better at what they do. The writing process was a little bit easier than the last two albums, and we were able to get together for a month and rehearse before we went into the studio. And then when we went in a lot of things came up and changed in the studio. It was a matter of being prepared, and I guess all in all the most important thing is that we’re happy with the album.”

Conceptually based, it ends with a four-part structure entitled ‘The Willing Well’ that sits apart from the album proper, and offers a different aspect to the album to close it out. “That’s just basically us clumping a lot of different ideas into one thing,” he explains. “It’s all these different parts, and then we get into the studio and even more parts come up into it. I know there’s some guitar things that I came up with there. It’s basically just whatever happens – it’s not a conscious effort making a long song or putting all these parts in it, but it just happens.”

So it’s not planned – instead, Travis explains that Coheed and Cambria are very much an instinctual act, where the band work out ideas and flesh out sounds when they get together as a band. It has resulted in Good Apollo... being quite a detailed and intricate prog-metal effort. The Willing Well in particular started out with changes the four-piece made from an acoustic demo that the Geddy Lee-like voiced Caudio Sanchez had written.

“He game me the demo, and there were three separate songs not connected yet,” explains Travis. “But we really connected them as a band and put things together and added certain parts. I’d write guitar parts over it and Mike [Todd, bass] and Josh [Eppard, drums] would basically write from the acoustic parts, and then when we all got together it all came together.”

Is that always how it works? Everyone writes their own parts and brings their own ideas to the table?

“Everybody does their own thing; that’s the way it is,” he confirms. “Sometimes it’s different – some songs we sit down then and there and write the songs at soundcheck. For a lot of songs that’s the way it goes. But generally everyone comes up with the parts once we’re all together. The basic song is already there and then the band gets together and really builds it.”

At this stage, the second part of the concept is still very much in development. That’s really not my field – that’s really Claudio, telling his story. I don’t even know. I know that he knows and he’s pretty much written and got it. He was still assembling the [first part of the] story as we went into the studio to record it, but part two I don’t even know. Really, the whole thing that we do is as a band – that’s the way that we look at it – and then he’s writing the story that goes with the lyrics. When we’re out here [on tour] we want to be looked as a band more than anything.”

The effort was definitely put into making Good Apollo..., with the time and money that signing to a major label affords utilised to flesh out songs that all started as acoustic demos to something that’s resulted in so much more. The record is certainly a detailed release, but in terms of the live performance Travis points out that Coheed and Cambria bring the rock to the forefront. “Like with every band, the live sound is different,” he says. “We have a keyboard player who, well, plays keyboards and triggers samples and stuff like that for us that take on some of the aspects that wouldn’t be there if it was just the four of us. It’s good to have him. We rehearse before every tour and figure out what we want to play and what we don’t want to play and how we want to play it, and it usually works out pretty well.”

He also says that there’s somewhat of a ‘jam aspect’ to the live show, with an instinctual on the night feel overtaking particularly on usual set closer “The Final Cut”.

“We just jam on the end of it because we’ve got so used to doing it at the end,” he says. “It started out as just us jamming at the end of the song and going on and on and going ‘on that’s cool’ and then if you remember it the next night then you do it again. That kind of thing. If you don’t remember it you do something else. The guitar solos, even drums and bass solos kind of stuff.”

Coheed and Cambria’s Good Apollo... is out now, with the band touring accordingly. Dates:
22 March – HiFi, Melbourne
25 March – UNSW Roundhouse, Sydney
26 March – The Arena, Brisbane