Revisiting Year of the Black Rainbow by Coheed and Cambria
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 had finished his ambitious goal of telling his Amory Wars story through records and didn’t really know where to take the direction of the project next. On this record, he sort of completes that saga by writing a prequel, one that focuses more on the band’s titular characters as opposed to their son.
The album opens with “One,” something that isn’t really new for Coheed. It’s a piano laced instrumental track that sounds like something big is coming, almost like a movie trailer. Listening now this feels like the half-thought out version of “The Hollow,” the intro from the first half of their Afterman double record. I’m saying that at this moment in time though because I know what the “future” holds and I probably didn’t have that notion back in 2010. Something I do actually like about this one a lot is the naming convention. The Amory Wars records all had a number associated with their placement in the timeline in the title and while this one doesn’t, it feels like Sanchez’s way of sneaking in that final missing piece right at the start of the record.
I have two major issues with “The Broken” that I didn’t quite remember until I came back. The first is, and this comes up throughout the record truthfully, Sanchez is both under and over delivering at various points of the song. The opening line sounds totally natural but from there we go up and down an octave between every single line. The second is, for a Coheed song, this is very basic. On the four records preceding this we could do songs that were between six and eight minutes and the time wouldn’t even register. I feel all four minutes of this song, especially on the basslines, which is bad enough, but this was also the lead single.
“Guns of Summer” has less a performance issue vocally and more a pronunciation one. The lines “let the cleansing begin” and the titular line at the end of the track are enunciated pretty strangely and it sort of takes me out of each moment. The song also sounds demo quality, which I wouldn’t mind except for the fact that “The Broken” leads into this and to have a presentation be so fluid yet the following track being less professional just breaks immersion. I like the electronic elements at the start of the song but to have them shatter the solo section makes it sound incomplete. Overall, I do enjoy the vibe of the song though. The instrumentation itself sounds more freeing, similar to an “Everything Evil” or “The Final Cut.” Songs in the Coheed discography that the band usually just jams out to live. I don’t think “Guns of Summer” ever got that treatment but the basis for that type of presentation is certainly there.
“Here We Are Juggernaut” as well as “Far” are both sort of windows out of this record for a moment yet still sort of go with everything sonically. “Juggernaut” drops the issues of the surrounding album and uses YotBR’s niches to make a good-sounding Coheed and Cambria song. While “Far” sort of sounds like Sanchez trying to emulate The Police. Not just in his adult contemporary vocal delivery but in the marching band-esque drums and the riff that goes on the entire time. I can respect his taken influence but the overall track just isn’t clicking with me.
“This Shattered Symphony” is another one on the better side. The instrumentals, once again, sound like a jam project but what actually hits me here is Sanchez’s delivery. Instead of over performing he’s sort of tapping into a musical theater level of drama. See lines like;
My favorite on the album, both from memory and from this experience, is “World of Lines.” It’s the only true prog song on the record and although the track is concise and has its formula there is a new layer added each time and when you hear it in its final form it blows you away. If you didn’t see the steps taken to get to that final chorus it would in no way be as dynamic. On “Lines,” when Sanchez’s vocals are off it is almost drowned in the production and feels like a statement as opposed to a leftover or demo. Speaking of, he’s also allowing himself to be pretty pissed off on this one. While I cannot find any source now I seem to remember him stating in a video somewhere that this “world between the lines” was his real life and a pushback on some of the negative attention he was getting in the making of this record and that’s really coming through here. On the line;
“You’ve managed nothing more than a pathetic attempt at attack but this heart is everlasting, pushing forward, never crashing.”
He’s so mad he’s screaming. I think on the entire discography before this you could count on one hand the number of times Claudio Sanchez screams in a Coheed song. He’s allowing himself to let that stuff out. This song shoots so much higher than what the bounds of this record are and I really wish I wasn’t so married to the album format as a listener or that this and songs like “Juggernaut” were attached to a better project.
I could hear “Made Out of Nothing” working live, though we’re probably past that point in 2022. It has a catchy chorus as well as a compelling bridge but the whole song is just sort of fine. The lyricism on this record is something I take issue with and I haven’t touched on it much but lines like;
“I am the nothing you have saved.”
And that “the laughing feels so good” bit, among others, don’t really feel like words about a sci-fi novel they just sound like direct quotes. Which, I’ll touch more on later but in this genre I don’t really feel like that quite sticks.
There aren’t many Coheed songs that I do not like but “Pearl of the Stars” is one of them. The instrumentation here is so boring that the ongoing acoustic guitars sort of just sound like free use muzak. The bassline is pretty nice by itself but it just keeps going on and on and doesn’t ever change. The solo section on this one sounds like it’s lifted from the most generic, lame classic rock track that the band could find that no one would remember and the string sections? Cheesy, forced. This track is the most extreme form of the problems I talked about on “Far.” The vocals sound like Sanchez is trying to be someone else entirely and when he does that spoken word bit it honestly sounds kinda creepy. He isn’t saying anything worth much either;
“When you go I will know, follow you through the stars.
And when the world burns apart there’ll be a place for your car.”
That’s honestly dumb. I don’t have a nice way to present to you that the lyrics on that chorus are just dumb middle school english class poetry. He also rhymes “were” and “were” on the second verse. This is not a band, generally, that doesn’t show up but they just don’t on this one and I’m realizing it’s shortcomings like this that inspire me to not come back for revisits on this album.
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