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