Album Details

• Artist: Coheed And Cambria
• Album: Year Of The Black Rainbow
• Label: Columbia
• Year of Release: 2010
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: kev_stev on 2010-04-18

Coheed and Cambria have always had an extremely strong and dedicated fanbase and it's easy to understand why: they offer fans a fully immersive experience, which includes highly conceptual albums, correlating graphic novels, and often mind-boggling music videos.  However, though there has always been a story to Coheed and Cambria's music (the albums collectively are supposed to tell one story), the band's product has been far from consistent.

After releasing two excellent albums, the band drastically took a turn for the worse in 2005.  Ridiculously long song titles, overemphasized vocals with faux-British accents, bombastic solos, never-ending songs, and inane, and sometimes shockingly misogynistic, lyrics plagued their third album, making it all but unlistenable save for a few singles.  The band's fifth release, Year of the Black Rainbow, continues the band's regression, as they slowly dissolve into nothing more than a prog cover-band.

After an ominous opening instrumental, "The Broken" begins the album strongly, as guitars heavily boom and pump out lots of fuzzy noise.  However, Sanchez's vocals are a great disappointment: he blurts out what sounds like "blah" after the song's extremely strong chorus and his snarl towards the song's conclusion sounds closest to a gag-reflex.  Following is the speedy guitars on "Guns of Summer," which awkwardly outpace Sanchez's sluggish vocals.  Like the single, "Here We are Juggernaut," "Guns" tries to hide a passionless song with a large chorus and amplified volume, but it fails in its deception.

Nothing is as embarrassingly awful as "Far," though.  The booming drum beats and cloying vocals wreak of forced emotionalism, which is the problem with a band like Coheed and Cambria; they are wrapped up in the fiction of their story, but seemingly lack a strong personal connection to the lyrics.  The song sounds like "Wake Up," one of the band's worst songs to date, only with a guitar solo that perfectly captures what an elephant would wail during its slow death.  For a band that is trying to revitalize progressive rock, this cheesy attempt at a pop song could not have been more misplaced-nearly right square in the middle of the album, killing any chance of cohesion.

"This Shattered Sympathy" redeems the album instrumentally, as winding electronic guitars sprawl over the track while the drumming treks on with spirited enthusiasm.  A similar motif in "World of Lines," though, switches the theme from intensely melodic to irritatingly melodramatic, as Sanchez constantly gasps as if each lyric will be his final epitaph.

Taking the same format as "Far," "Pearl of the Stars" is so bloated and schmaltzy that the idiotic chorus seems perfectly fitting: "When you go, I will know / Follow you to the stars / And when the world burns apart / There will be a place for your car."  Fans may justify the cryptic lyrics through the comic book narrative, but if the song cannot stand alone, then what's the point?  This album is as bleak as the title suggests: there is no treasure to be found at the end of this rainbow.

User Reviews and Comments

on 2010-05-03 SolitaryMan Said:

I'm more inclined to immediately enjoy new C&C whenever it arrives than most; they've prior hit upon a formula that spoke to almost every aspect of my love of rock music. But this album has me far less entertained than I expected to be. To my ears, Coheed is simultaneously trying to push the envelope and rest on their laurels, ultimately doing neither to great effect. There's far more to love on the back-half of the album, "The Black Rainbow" and "World of Lines" standing out in particular. All in all, this might go down as my least favorite C&C album, but one that still has enough to it to satisfy on a basic level. 6/10.
Not Rated

on 2010-04-18 kev_stev Said:

I wanted to like this one too. Thought if I gave it some time, I would. Incorrect!
Rating: 3/10

on 2010-04-14 dscanland Said:

Nice review. I'm really excited to hear Year Of The Black Rainbow. I fell in love with C&C on the last album once again (they took a bit of a detour that I didn't enjoy inbetween).
Not Rated

Review:

on 2010-04-14 creagerk Said:

The first song I heard by Coheed and Cambria was Wake Up, a slow, melancholy, acoustically driven ballad. You can imagine my surprise when I went to listen to their other stuff. Im not a metal fan, but bands like C&C have pushed the boundaries of my musical tastes. I guess thats why theyre classified as progressive rock. In a world full of Green Days and Weezers and Fall Out Boys (who are all great in their own right), its still refreshing to hear rock that goes a little harder and a little longer.

When I heard that C&Cs albums are all based on a comic book storyline written by frontman Claudio Sanchez, I was surprised that this boundary doesnt limit the band to write only in one specific way. I havent read the books, but with C&Cs latest album Year of the Black Rainbow, Sanchez released a novel of the same name, which is the prequel to the stories. The stories are called The Amory Wars, and each C&C album released is actually a chapter in Sanchezs science-fiction concept. As a result, the song lyrics are focused, yet not totally specific to the story. I think its insanely genius to have an idea so powerful that you need multiple creative outlets for it. I kinda want to read the stories so I can interpret the lyrics in a new way, guessing which character is which, and diving deeper into their inner monologues. Year of the Black Rainbow has been released just in time for their return to the desert music festival Coachella, which I will be at in 3 days. :)

An ominous intro leads into The Broken, a powerful first track and a great first song release. The next song Guns of Summer is a flurry of palm mutes and effect pedals that drown out the lyrics. Its too much. I cant even imagine what this drummer looks like playing on this one though. Its crazy. The highlight of the album and the first single is Here We Are Juggernaut. (This is not your playground/its my heart.) On Far, Sanchez croons No matter the distance/No matter how far. Nope, thats not a quote from a Backstreet Boys album. This one is a little slower and has a bit of an electronic beat. It gets kinda dull about halfway through, even though they toss in an arena-rockish solo. This Shattered Symphony has a ton of minor key madness that was a little offputting a first, but the song grew on me quickly. Not much else is worth mentioning until The Black Rainbow, a 7 minute finale that climaxes in wailing guitars, screams, and chaos. It abruptly ends, and fades out with an outro thats as haunting as the intro.

While Year of the Black Rainbow isnt exactly a step back from the sound of C&C, it isnt a step forward. The album seems like it is lacking in production, at least compared to their previous albums. There is no standout track like Welcome Home to fully round out the epic-ness of the prequel, instead leaving it as a flat introduction to The Amory Wars saga, and the other C&C albums. Maybe the album just needs Sanchezs novel to compliment it, but thats a review for another day.
Rating: 5/10