Review: Coheed And Cambria – Year Of The Black Rainbow

April 16th, 2010 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

Full disclosure: I like Coheed and Cambria so much that I got their logo tattooed on my wrist. I know that that was a retarded thing to do, but I was younger and drunker then, so whatever. I have no regrets. Despite my longstanding fandom of the band, I had pretty low expectations for their new disc, Year Of The Black Rainbow -- they’ve been slickening up their sound pretty much ever since their debut (The Second Stage Turbine Blade), and their previous record (2007′s No World For Tomorrow) bore almost no relation to the adventurous, weird sounds these guys first captivated me with when I saw them open for Thrice at Metro in ’03. It was a corporate steamer, filled with power ballads and big soft hooks for all the mouth-breathers that still listen to Q101.

But damned if Year of The Black Rainbow doesn’t find them recharged -- instead of the typical symphonic intro to begin the album, there’s some weird industrial clatter that suggests something has gone very, very wrong. This is (of course) the beginning of a whole new story for the band -- never content with mere concept albums, these guys have created an entire mythology (supplemented by graphic novels and lots of hilarious amateur analysis on internet message boards). Here’s another disclosure: I have never, even for one second, paid attention to the storyline behind any of this. I just want the riffs, man. And, good news, there are plenty of white-hot licks to go around here, with Claudio Sanchez and Travis Stever playing dual leads on most of the songs. There’s so much flashy guitar action here that I briefly contemplated basing this entire review around a claim that C&C are my generation’s Metallica (inasmuch as my generation needs a Metallica -- the old model is still chugging along pretty smoothly), but that would be mostly bullshit.

Year Of The Black Rainbow would, however, be Coheed’s “black” album -- stripped down and heavier than fuck, without any elaborate song suites or fluff. Since the story that drove the band’s back catalog is (I think?) officially closed, we can isolate those records as the band’s White Unicorn period -- i.e., galloping neo-prog mixed with elements of fantasy and sci-fi. This new material is distinctly different -- darker, harder, downright merciless when it really gets cooking. Black Unicorn shit, in other words.

My only complaint is that eventually the disc gets a little bogged down and samey in the middle, but that’s been a complaint I’ve had about everything these guys have ever done. It’s all about the good stuff, and the good stuff is great enough to support the weight of the band’s occasional excesses. Do I recommend this to you? Yes, of course, and I don’t even need to qualify that with a warning about every person’s individual tolerance for goofy shit. There’s nothing silly about Year Of The Black Rainbow -- these guys have been singing about epic battles forever, but now it feels like the fight is really on. Forward, then, into the black-lit abyss!