Having just dropped their eighth studio album, The Color Before the Sun, last month, progressive rock band Coheed & Cambria arrived at The Ventura Theater on Tuesday, October 27 for the nearest stop on their tour. This new record serves as a major departure from the band’s status quo of playing music relating to frontman Claudio Sanchez’s sci-fi mythos and comic series The Amory Wars.
Bands oftentimes struggle when they attempt to depart from a working recipe that made them successful, but The Color Before the Sun proved that Sanchez and company are talented and confident enough to step outside their comfort zones. Having seen them perform earlier this year at The Observatory in Santa Ana, I was eager to see how they planned to incorporate their new songs into the setlist.
Coheed & Cambria elected to play four of their new songs in pairs, launching into “Island” and “Eraser” to start and returning six songs later with “You Got Spirit, Kid” and “Here to Mars.” Although the tracks deviate from the band’s prevailing post-hardcore, progressive method, their new record hearkens back to an energetic, pop-punk style with appropriately-placed metal breakdowns, and the absence of a recurring theme or story allows the listener to craft a narrative in their own mind.