Album Rating: 3.0

Just listened to Shoulders again and it's worse than the first few times. Really hate the direction these guys are trending. I guess I'll just hope the new album has a few songs I like that I can put into a Coheed playlist or something.

Album Rating: 5.0

Yeha I wasn't digging Shoulders very much...

Album Rating: 3.5

Honestly it’s really only the lyrics that kill it for me

Album Rating: 4.0

Yeah, the lyrics aren't as fun or cryptic as they used to be.

Album Rating: 5.0

"Yeah, the lyrics aren't as fun or cryptic as they used to be."



The lore has gotten waaaaay too deep for the lyrics to be cryptic like the only days anymore. I've talked to some Coheed fans on reddit and seen some twitter stuff to know that they're probably more into the lore itself than the actual music. Were C&C to go back to the old days it might piss a lot of those fans off, who want in depth explanations for the story and whatnot. It's not really possible for the band to regress like that.

Album Rating: 3.0

Well they've regressed pretty fuckin hard over the last 7 years so what difference would it make at this point?

Album Rating: 3.9

It mean, it's been touch and go ever since YOTBW, although the touches in question are p damn hard ones

I think what sticks with the majority of the fanbase has little to do with how cryptic the lyrics are either way and much more with the general tendency of their songwriting away from snarky prog epics and towards stadium cheese. This just about balanced the two to success, but I can see bad sad things ahead. Who knows.

Album Rating: 3.0

"snarky prog epics"

Honestly, I feel like this is slightly overstated in how frequently they made prog epics. There are really only one or two per album with a few exceptions (I almost count The Willing Well as one huge piece). I think outside of TWW suite and some weird stuff on YOTBR, they never really did crazy time signatures with big key changes and odd song structures. Most of their stuff follows a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-do what you want-maybe a final chorus structure and I think that always worked best rather than the traditional song structure they've taken now.

Coheed generally wasn't too wild but they did enough in each song to make them really interesting to listen to. I'd just like them to bring back more of the emo and punk/post-hardcore touches they had on the early stuff because I think it was the perfect blend with the proggish rock they wrote. I don't like 80s stadium rock nor 80s ballads so I'm disappointed with the direction they've been heading. I don't even need "cryptic" lyrics, just stuff that doesn't sound like what I would've thought was cool when I was 13.

Album Rating: 5.0

I love 80's stadium rock so this is right up my alley

Album Rating: 4.0

"The lore has gotten waaaaay too deep for the lyrics to be cryptic like the only days anymore."



I actually disagree hard. Listening to the lyrics now, it's not like you really get some in-depth understanding of the cool shit happening in the story. Listening to people talk about the Dark Sentencer (the actual planet) you'd think there would be songs about Creature going into the inner layers and seeing the horrible fucked up shit the further he gets, not to mention all the shit with the Seers and the River he almost drowns in and the red ore. Instead it's just a bunch of love songs which, while I clearly didn't hate the album, don't really give us an idea of the true story going on. Now a days you have to buy the story book to really get it.

Album Rating: 3.9

@LightAndGlass sorry I forgot to reply to this - you're ofc technically right that there aren't that many Coheed epics en masse, but I think these guys always had a great knack for nailing epic/dark territory (which I lazily pigeonholed as snarky prog) without necessarily doing anything too fancy. It's the difference between, say, a track like It Walks Among Us and and one like Love Protocol on this. The former camp isn't *that* more convoluted, but there's a scale and urgency to it that the latter's whimsical stadium whimsy v much lacks - and if prog isn't about scale, whether illusionary or charted in literal composite minutes (and minutes and minutes). That's the vibe I think the gud Coheed hinges around - this disc has it and the first 3/4s of the Afterman had it, but YOTBW skirted it and TCBTS was a straight miss. In hindsight "snarky prog epics" wasn't the clearest choice of words for this, but ygm?

V much in agreement with the latter para.

Album Rating: 3.5

the new song is WAY better than shoulders

Album Rating: 4.0

agreed hard

Album Rating: 2.5

I liken new Coheed to new Dream Theater: very talented musicians that stopped using the repertoire of their creativity to instead release safer, paint-by-numbers songs. Both bands still use different elements here and there, but not enough in ways to really make the songs stand out.



Afterman: Ascension/Descension did push the envelop for Coheed in ways ("Evagria", "Afterman"), but the Vaxis stuff feels more straightforward, even when it's good.

Album Rating: 2.5

That being said, "Cut the Cord" might grow on me a bit, we'll see.

Album Rating: 3.5

seems pretty hard to be innovative 20-30 years into a career. a comparative handful manage it, but i never expect it. i don't end up disappointed that way

Album Rating: 2.5

That's a fair point. Another thing worth mentioning is that this set of albums is Claudio writing about his son and becoming a father. The new single is very much singing to/about Atlas growing up.

Album Rating: 2.5

Maybe I'm being too hard on this. Gonna give it another full listen.

Album Rating: 4.0

I really don't mind the new Coheed sound, esp. because I have no delusion that they will return to something like SSTB. That being said, at this point my biggest and only gripe with the music is that the songs don't really live up to the events. New Coheed is just love songs hodgepodged into a "story" instead of the old stuff that felt more like Claudio telling a story while using emotion from his real experiences to fuel it.

Album Rating: 2.5

"New Coheed is just love songs hodgepodged into a "story" instead of the old stuff that felt more like Claudio telling a story while using emotion from his real experiences to fuel it."



You nailed my thoughts exactly–much better put.