THE SECOND STAGE TURBINE BLADE

When I originally decided to listen to Coheed and Cambria, I began with this album, and was extremely surprised. From what this band was described as, an incredibly ambitious, epic band with an overarching sci fi concept, I instead was somewhat disappointed to find out just how much of a pop and even occasionally emo edge they had to them. This disappointment was actually increased due to how amazing the band's intros tended to be, as I found 'Second Stage Turbine Blade' and the intro to 'Time Consumer' to sound absolutely incredible, only to be greeted by a fairly standard hard rock tune directly after. However, I must say that my initial opinion of them was heavily biased and led by my disappointment, rather than looking at it objectively, because it's actually a pretty decent album overall.

I've already started speaking about just how incredible I find the intro to 'Time Consumer' to be, having an excellent melody and atmosphere, which then transforms into the poppy, yet great main parts of it. I really love the vocals of Claudio Sanchez, as they manage to be extremely nice and pleasant in many cases, while also being able to have a lot of emotion put behind them when the song requires it. 'Delirium Trigger' is another song that has an incredible intro, and is my favourite song on the album other than possibly 'Time Consumer'. This song almost sounds like something from Deloused era 'Mars Volta', especially with the vocals. The melody is great, and the chorus is simply dripping with emotion. The rest of the album similarly follows this basic template.

This album is quite flawed in a number of ways however, the biggest reason being the aforementioned template used for many songs here, having an intro that's usually incredible, but different to the majority of the song, which then leads into a pop rock track, the issue here being how many of them sound very similar to one another past the halfway point, with the drumming being quite monotonous throughout. My one other large issue with this album is that while the vocals are usually incredible, Claudio was far from being able to scream well at this point, and so whenever he tries using harsh vocals, it ends up sounding quite terrible.

On the whole, the album is of fair quality, with the first half being great, with some of the band's best material, while the second half is somewhat dull and tiresome, overall making it one of the weaker releases by the band. Despite this, I cannot deny that the melodies are often great, and that many of the intros are good enough that it makes me wonder how different this band would end up being if they focused more on these aspects rather than further developing the pop element of their sound, but as it stands, this is a decent album, but not one that I will jump out and strongly recommend to people.

Best Tracks: Time Consumer, Everything Evil, Delirium Trigger

Weakest Tracks: Hearshot Kid Disaster, 33

Verdict: A decent album all around, but far from the best that Coheed has to offer. The sound is quite pop oriented in general, so be prepared for that, but at least give the first 4 main tracks a listen if you're interested, as they are quite strong