Review: Coheed And Cambria - Year Of The Black Rainbow

Coheed And Cambria rode into town on a prog rock pony while sporting some of the most awesomely cliche metal hair you've ever seen. Armed with epic guitar riffs, shifting time signatures and a story line so twisted and pointlessly complex that only vocalist Claudio Sanchez understands what he's singing about, the band hit their peak with 2005's Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV: Volume 1 From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness and their  untoppable single "Welcome Home".

Since then Coheed have wandered the barren wasteland called follow up success. 2007's No World For Tomorrow was a watered down affair caught in limbo between straight forward radio rock complete with big guitars and a set of songs that harked back to their purest prog effort in 2003's In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3.

Year of the Black Rainbow is the band's most polished, accessible and low key effort yet.. A concept album that serves as a prequel to their debut record, a stand out single is painfully absent here. When no one understands what you'e emoting about, it's in your best interest to give the listener a choice cut to sink their teeth in to. Instead Rainbow works more as a collection of well intentioned, if not well executed, plot segments as opposed to songs.

Produced by Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails) and Joe Barresi (Queens Of The Stone Age), Coheed make an earnest effort to construct their tunes around a solid melody rather than sprawling arrangements. This both helps and hurts the band. "When Skeletons Live" is the closest attempt at catchy and off beat coming together in a cohesive unit. Sanchez's high register is tamed to a certain extent finding a niche inside the topsy turvy guitar licks the song is made of.

"The Broken" and "Here We Are Juggernaut" are other stand outs as well. The latter finds a nice industrial fuzz part giving the song a hint of paranoia that Sanchez uses to great effect. Sure it may not meet your standards of yesteryear, but Sanchez admits it himself when he sings "Nothing matters anymore".

Yet the band's efforts to grow up and become (gulp) mainstream weigh the whole album down. Songs like "Far" and "Pearl of the Stars" come off as genuine and a total borefest at the same time. Imagine the worst parts of Angels & Airwaves trying to mesh with the experimental moments of Pink Floyd... yeah.

Black Rainbow is a modest improvement over its predecessor, yet Coheed's desire to expand their sound while cherry picking their favorite parts of not-so-long ago don't settle well. They want to grow up with their audience before their audience out grows them. They had better get busy - they won't wait much longer.

Grade: C

Key Tracks: "The Broken" "Here We Are Juggernaut" "When Skeletons Live"