Claudio Sanchez gets real on Coheed and Cambria’s latest album

Claudio Sanchez really put himself out there on Coheed and Cambria’s latest record.

You’d think that would make him feel totally vulnerable. Instead, he sounds completely at ease with the entire experience. Breaking from the past on his band’s latest record, “The Color Before the Sun,” the Coheed and Cambria frontman poured so much more of himself into the music. For anyone who’s followed the band for any amount of time, the shift is striking. Sure, he lent his first name to one of the characters in the sprawling story that’s formed the contextual foundation for the band’s concept albums in the past, but otherwise, he’s avoided mining his own life for inspiration. Turns out, that’s not by chance.

“That was definitely the reasoning behind creating a science-fiction concept,” he acknowledges. “I’m a character in the story, kind of by accident, because I put my name in one of the songs, but in a way, had I not put my name in there, the character would’ve reflected me to some degree. In that story, I get to be who I wish I could be in life, I guess. Then again, that’s kind of why it was there, to create this facade that would take the beating, and I could remain unscathed.”

On the band’s eight album, Sanchez has stepped firmly outside the fictional framework, revealing himself throughout the record in a way that’s decidedly more direct. “I mean, I created the concepts in 1998, because I was so insecure and didn’t want to put myself out there,” he elaborates. “Now, I’m 37, and with all this evolution of my life, it’s just like I think I’m a little more empowered and a little more confident to do something like this. That’s why a record like this hasn’t come out sooner.”

Unlike past material, which was rooted in the Amory Wars, an involved science-fiction narrative that centers on two characters from a story Sanchez conceived more than a decade ago, these songs are based in real life. The contrast was so sharp to Sanchez, he says, that at first he didn’t even consider them for the band.

“You know, at first, I thought of this record as so different that I almost considered it a solo record,” says Sanchez. “Yeah, so for a time, it wasn’t going to be a Coheed and Cambria album. It wasn’t until I was finished with it that I thought, you know, why should the concept be any different when it comes to Coheed? We try to be as limitless as possible, when it comes to creativity. At that moment, there was that sense of clarity, where it was like, this belongs here.”

The new songs were directly inspired by a move into the city from the country.

“It was different because I was sort of outside my comfort zone,” Sanchez recalls of the songwriting process. “I found myself in a small New York City apartment, as opposed to a secluded country home when creating it, and I think that sort of exposure – in terms of, like, my neighbors hearing what I was working on, sort of fell into the delivery of the record, and I think that was the real difference. I think the idea of my son coming into my life and just how new that was in the stage of my life, I just thought this is the right time to sort of do something like this, and see if it’s something we can do.”

That wasn’t necessarily as easy as it might sound, says Sanchez, at least not at first. “I think there was a lot of pressure I put on myself, like it was just me, you know, when I started writing the record,” he recalls. “That’s why I started to think of it as a solo album, because for me, it was like, ‘Oh, this stuff is not falling within the guidelines of what Coheed and Cambria has created, what our history sort of says our records should be.’

“And so that kind of led me through this sense of identity, this crisis that I just…who am I?” He continues. “You know, is this about me, or is it about this bigger thing that I’m a part of? So, that was really just a pressure that I put on myself, self-inflicting. And until my wife told me that we were pregnant is when everything really fell into focus, and it didn’t matter so much.”

Even though he eventually managed to get his own expectations in check, the singer says he still suffered from a sense of self consciousness when he was writing the record. That came from the close proximity that comes with living in an urban environment, when you live close enough to other people that they can listen in on what you’re creating.

“If I could hear my neighbors in this apartment situation, they’re damn well going to hear me,” Sanchez points out. “So I was just, like, I got a little self-conscious. So I thought if they’re going to hear anything, well, I’m going to have it be as honest as possible, and, yeah, and it’s going to reflect me. You know, so, yeah, that’s it.”

That sense of honesty worked in his favor and it also appealed to his bandmates. “Now that I’ve sort of decided to let that take a breather,” he says, “everyone was really excited to see something that was a little more honest without the disguise.” Although everyone eventually came to embrace the concepts of Coheed and Cambria, for the longest time, he says, not everybody understood the Amory Wars and its relationships to the records. That’s understandable. Conceptually, it does take some time to absorb.

“It’s really just a science-fiction fantasy that revolves around a family,” says Sanchez, distilling the narrative to its core. “That’s pretty much it. A lot of it has to do with the relationship between two people, whether it’s Coheed and Cambria, or the character of Claudio — aka the Crowing or Ambalina — there’s always sort of a relationship that propels the story forward. But really the center of it is how these two people come together and just sort of endure the trials that are put before them.

“But yeah, that’s the broadest explanations,” he allows. Because if we go down the road, then we’re going down 78 planets, bound together by a beam of energy called the Key Word, powered by seven star transformers, and there are these…you know, it just gets super…if you want that, I guess you have to get into the book.”

“For me, it was something I created years before Coheed and Cambria became what it was,” he says, remembering how the whole thing first came about. “It was just this little project that I put together, and it wasn’t until that Coheed – well, at the time, we were under a different name – got signed to Equal Vision that, you know, everybody thought the name that we bore was pretty… it just didn’t work for the kind of music we were playing, and everybody seemed to very much like the name Coheed and Cambria.

“And so after we had created all this material and we sort of adopted this name, I thought, well, you know, I have this idea for a concept with it, and some of those songs were birthed from that — “Everything Evil” and “Time Consumer” – and I was just like, ‘I’m going to bring that concept over here.’ Again, it was an unsure thing from the band members because I think it was somewhat shocking. But through time, everybody really came to embrace it.”

And so have the fans, both those who are entirely invested in the storylines, as well as those who simply love the music and have no use for everything else in the outfit’s imaginary universe. Whatever the case, Sanchez and company have made a concerted effort over the years to keep Coheed and Cambria accessible.

“I find some conceptual bands, if the lyrics are just punishing you to understand the narrative, you ostracize an audience, and I try not to do that,” says Sanchez. “I understand that the concept through time becomes very big, to the point that some outside listeners may not even get into what we do because it feels like a big undertaking.

“But that’s really not the case. The concept is just there as an extension. It’s not like a mandatory prerequisite in order to understand and enjoy Coheed and Cambria. Again, the name suggests it. It’s really just a relationship between two people and how they endure as a unit. That’s really what it’s suggesting in the title.”

Read more from Dave Herrera at reviewjournal.com/music. Contact him directly at dherrera@reviewjournal.com or follow @rjmusicdh on Twitter.