Aster Tracks

Hello, welcome to AsterTracks! In case you were unaware we are doing a mini series diving into some of the more lesser appreciated Coheed and Cambria records throughout the month of April. If you wish to read the piece on Year of the Black Rainbow or The Afterman you can find them by clicking the respective title. So we arrive at the end, The Color Before the Sun, Coheed’s eighth record released in 2015. I have a complicated relationship with this one, this being the first time I invested into the boxset on a Coheed and Cambria record, I even got extravagant and had my name put in the credits. It was the first time in my life I was really making enough money to justify a big purchase like this and I was really anticipating the release of the record. When the acoustic demo for “Atlas” leaked I was totally in love and when the first official single “You Got Spirit, Kid” dropped I was just sort of warm on it. I ultimately didn’t love the record and for a long time considered it my least...

Hello, welcome to AsterTracks! In case you were unaware we are doing a mini series diving into some of the more lesser appreciated Coheed and Cambria records throughout the month of April. If you wish to read the piece on Year of the Black Rainbow you can find it here. The Afterman is Coheed’s sixth, or sixth and seventh, full-length released in 2012 and 2013 as a double record. I recall that at the time the band had announced dates for both parts making this seem like a more holistic experience as opposed to the Good Apollo records, which were extensions of each other but at the same time their own entities. The concept on this one promised to be much grander, being a prequel to the prequel exploring the mission of Sirius Amory as he aims to study the Keywork, the force that binds the planets in the storyline together. Now before I go on, normally on a Coheed write up I wouldn’t even bring the story up too much, but on Afterman I find it a bit necessary for reasons we’ll get into lat...

Coheed and Cambria is a band I have praised for years. They are also one of the artists I throw on most consistently, though when I do listen I find that I only listen to certain records. From Second Stage Turbine Blade to No World for Tomorrow and then going all the way to Unheavenly Creatures are albums that, to me, really stand the test of time. No matter how many years have passed I always go back to those five records for revisits but there are also four others. So, with a new record right around the corner, I have decided to start a mini series throughout the month of April. Here, I will be listening to the four Coheed albums that I don’t regularly go back to and giving my sort of first re-impression of them and why I do not think of them in my regular rotation. The first of those records is Year of the Black Rainbow. Released in this very month twelve years ago, the band’s fifth record saw them at a sort of crossroads. Singer, guitar player and core songwriter Claudio Sanchez ...