Art by Chase Stone
Style: Progressive Rock, Alternative Rock (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Dear Hunter, Closure in Moscow
Country: United States – New York
Release date: 14 March 2025
If you can indulge in a bit of a trip in a time machine, imagine me in 2005, all of eleven years old, having a few months prior been given a copy of an album from a year previous called “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3” by a friend. I’ve heard there’s going to be a new album by this band Coheed and Cambria I’ve only just got into, and I want it desperately. Unfortunately, it has that pesky RIAA Parental sticker on it, and at the time, the local FYE wouldn’t sell it to me. Luckily, an older boy I knew was perfectly willing to buy it for me for an extra $5, so I caved and had them do it. Almost twenty years later Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV: Volume I: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness is still my favorite album, and Coheed and Cambria has been my favorite band nearly as long. So for me, nothing is ever as anticipated as a new Coheed release.
Across Coheed’s long career, this focus of the sound is vocalist Claudio Sanchez, who delivers high-voiced earworm melodies over their post-hardcore/emo rock origins. Earlier albums in their career took these ideas and stretched them into progressive behemoths, but in the modern era, Coheed has tended to put more emphasis on streamlined song structure and further focus on chorus hooks. Many people also know that Coheed’s records are backed by a concept, and The Father of Make Believe is the third installment of their current pentology story arc, preceded by Vaxis I and Vaxis II (actual titles truncated for brevity). For the sake of this review, I’m not going to dive much into anything overly concept related (although I could talk forever about it) albeit to say concept fans are going to have lots to love in certain head nods and callbacks to certain past albums. Musically Father immediately improves on its Vaxis predecessors: where Vaxis I suffered a bit from an over reliance on “chorus once more” (or twice more) causing bloat and over repetition, Father remembers to streamline its songs when necessary. Where Vaxis II perhaps fell back too much on the radio-rock and pop feel, causing some sameness, Father is able to tread much different ground throughout its runtime (more on this later), while still succeeding in having that pop-esque quality that has always sat inside Coheed. Where both albums leaned heavily into more synth layers and synth leading, Father is much more guitar driven both in structure and in melodies.
With a now years-long discussion on what genre or type of band Coheed is at this point, Father comes at an interesting time. Since Vaxis I there’s been commentary that some miss the “progressive” elements of Coheed, seemingly stripped away in favor of going for a more pop-oriented sound or delivery. This tends to be vocalised through fixation on song structure, riffs, time signatures, or song length as a measurement for the progressive element of this or any band. No, The Father of Make Believe doesn’t have multiple seven minute songs (it has none!); no, it doesn’t have complete side track sections in songs like “21:13” or the “Willing Wells” do. What it does have is that Coheed DNA that has been there since the inception, which is the ability to dabble in virtually any sound and feel cohesive, to create hooks and melodies at any point in a song, and to create the urge to sing whatever words come out of Claudio’s mouth. The progressive aspect for Coheed tends to be, and really is on Father, that aforementioned ability to go anywhere song to song and not lose the plot.
From “Goodbye, Sunshine” and “Searching for Tomorrow” feeling like Good Apollo Volume I songs with more modern ‘heed production, to “Blind Eye Sonny”’s almost harsh vocal delivery on top of a 2 minute blazing punk pace shoving you into “Play the Poet” — a song which sounds like a Year of the Black Rainbow cousin with its slight industrial feel — and ultimately with “The Continuum IV”’s almost Electric Light Orchestra or Beatles feel, Father treads very disparate ground in its songs but again, feels like it all belongs together. This is a trend seen in Coheed’s discography as a whole: The sounds of Second Stage are different from the sounds on IKSoSE:3, Good Apollo Volume I is different yet again; the trend continues in perpetuity throughout the band’s life. But in the end, Coheed have always benefited most from Claudio’s sense of melody and hook writing. I’ve always personally held a belief that Good Apollo IV Volume I is really a pop-esque album hidden behind a guitar-driven metal or prog rock adjacent delivery (like really, for all the “song structure” people, go look at GAIV song structures outside of the “Willing Wells”, it’s pop), and to me The Father of Make Believe at many times is a modern presentation of the same.
Do I still have some reservations? Sure, I think I still haven’t quite got on to the Cervini production style train; I still feel the drums are a bit squashed and neutered in post for my taste (though the performance, as always is chef’s kiss). It does have a bit of a weak point around “Meri of Mercy” where it briefly falls a little into the more recent Coheed ballad tropes. I do wonder if it gets a bit over arranged at times; and yeah, I wouldn’t mind even more riffs. But I do know this is the most obsessed I’ve personally been with a Coheed record on release since The Afterman series dropped, and I don’t see me dropping it any time soon. One last layer to all this: The Father of Make Believe does seem at times to lyrically hint to the idea of a post Coheed, or at least post-Amory Wars Coheed time. As time has gone on, the veil separating Claudio’s personal life from the story has thinned and grown more transparent, and now Claudio seems to examine in the lyrics the ideas of being seen as the creator of some large universe of story when you are really trying to let yourself be seen, while also hinting at something’s ultimate end. And while that does make me sad, it does remind me that as you age, some things you have to really start to appreciate, like your favorite band releasing an album you immediately grab onto and can’t get enough of, because those things are not guaranteed forever.
Anyways, I’m off to scour through the hidden vinyl track for any clues about the story, until I have my novella from the box set.
Recommended tracks: The Father of Make Believe, Play the Poet, The Continuum II: The Flood, Goodbye, Sunshine
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Final verdict: 8/10
Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Virgin Music Group (distributor) – Official Website
Coheed and Cambria is:
– Claudio Sanchez (vocals, guitars, synths)
– Travis Stever (guitars)
– Zach Cooper (bass)
– Josh Eppard (drums)
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