From the way Coheed & Cambria drummer Josh Eppard excitedly watches the queuing masses from the dressing room window at London’s Kentish Town Forum, it’s clear that his enjoyment of performing hasn’t waned throughout his lengthy history with the band. If anything, it seems to have been refuelled by his comparatively short stint away from Coheed prior to the release of 2012’s ‘The Afterman: Ascension’.
It’s an attitude shared by bassist Zach Cooper, who sits on the sofa next to Josh, expressing his love for tonight’s support act, glassjaw. “We’re all massive fans,” he proclaims with excitement, “they are just an amazing band to see live. It’s really special to be on tour with them here.”
“They straight-up just don’t tour,” Josh chips in, declaring the tour a badge of honour, “I don’t think they’d tour with just any band. I think they like our band.”
Despite our restricted amount of time together – Coheed & Cambria need to prepare for the imminent show – there are countless moments in which Josh and Zach reveal themselves simply as music fans. “We’re really a bunch of 15 year old kids,” Josh jokes, as they talk of their perception of setlist choices. “If a band I really liked was playing my favourite record from front to back, I’d go see that,” Josh states wholeheartedly, as Zach muses further about rushing to see their own supports. “We’ve been running around trying to see glassjaw all tour,” he laughs.
The enthusiasm has clearly spilled into their most recent full-length, ‘The Color Before The Sun’, unmistakably enhanced by their return to the basics. Their passion for live music has driven the record’s momentum.
“Sometimes when you’re doing a lot of layers in the studio, you’ll focus on one little two second clip, and try to get that just right,” Zach explains, looking back at his previous recording experience. “In the overall scheme of things, it’s not really worth it.”
That realisation led the band to strip everything back. Not only does last year’s full-length step away from the Amory Wars narrative, the fictional story underpinning their entire back-catalogue, it also removes a significant amount of production sheen. The result is Coheed & Cambria at their most exposed, both in vocalist and guitarist Claudio Sanchez’s lyrics, and in their delivery as a whole.
“I think our [studio] record is more of a live record than some bands’ live records,” Josh explains, as he delves into the recording process. The song were primarily formed during basement writing sessions with all of the band in the same room. And ‘The Color Before The Sun’ was recorded sequentially, beginning with ‘Island’ – the first track on the record – and ending with album closer, ‘Peace To The Mountain’.
“We would literally go in, plug in, and play the song 10 times live. We’d find a good take and then that was it,” Zach adds, a far cry from his experience with the record’s predecessor, double-album ‘The Afterman’. “On [our last record] I was auditioning on these songs,” he explains. “It was like, come in the next day and track them and see how it goes. The stuff that I did two days later was on the record.”
It is down to this process that ‘The Color Before The Sun’ celebrates a more coherent and considered sound, the first record to share creative input from Coheed & Cambria in their now settled guise. “I don’t think Coheed will ever change again,” says Josh, “I would be very surprised if it did.” He is keen to express that the band haven’t had as many line-up changes as it may appear. “We’ve had two drummers and two bassists,” he states matter-of-factly, after comparing it to bands who struggle to keep members from day-to-day.
“It was really strange and really fast,” Josh continues, returning to their most recent recording process. “We wanted to explore that as a challenge. We wanted to see if we can capture what happens when we play in a room together, without the studio slickness. It was challenging to record like that, but the experience was not only gratifying, it was rewarding. Ultimately, in my life, I take away a lot from this record.”
It is exactly that togetherness which defines ‘The Color Before The Sun’, and Coheed & Cambria as a band. By deliberately removing the veneer, alongside their genuine passion and enjoyment of music, the band have settled into a new stride. And the fire looks set to burn for a while yet. “We’re working on new shit when we’re sound checking already,” Josh admits. “Something’s always cooking.”
A bunch of 15 year old kids at heart, Coheed & Cambria combine that enthusiasm with a wealth of experience – an impressive concoction. Despite a small flicker of frustration in Josh’s eyes at the notion of his band being labelled “serious”, they clearly straddle both sides of the line. Serious in the dedication to the art, but not in the fashion that is often placed upon prog-heavy bands. “There’s certainly some serious moments in Coheed & Cambria’s back-catalogue,” he responds, “but are we always serious? No, we’re a fucking rock and roll band.”