Claudio Sanchez – Coheed and Cambria 'Music is an Entry into a Journal'
A surefire envy to gearheads everywhere, the Zoom call window into Claudio Sanchez’s New York home studio is replete in decades of immaculately well-kept and tiered synths, guitars, keyboards, and varied musical tidbits that the genre-kiltering frontman has roundly explored across a quarter century of professional rock stardom (see what we mean in our Patron Exclusive video). Due to Earth’s death flu phase, it’s been the better part of a decade since Coheed and Cambria visited ‘Straya.
These nastily unavoidable times have now passed for their famously dedicated and obsessive fans, and our prog/pop/punk/metal/funk/electro/sci-fi/etc. world champions of the concept album are headed back down under for a revived Monolith Festival + sideshows marking the band's first trip here since 2016.
Here’s WoS’ chat with the ever-affable and sincere Claudio both on the cusp of their long-awaited return to the opposite side of Earth, and on the back of burling new single 'Blind Side Sonny' from a still-clandestine new album. One which the band decrees will be the final for The Amory Wars; the multi-media space rock opera that has coursed almost ubiquitously through their entire discography.
Geez, what a setup! That studio is something to behold! All that stuff behind you… that's just a musician’s playground.
I know. Yeah. And this isn’t even all of it. You got a storage unit across the street that's got a tonne of stuff in the basement. Yeah, it's pretty wacky all the stuff I've got.
Do you get overwhelmed with choosing a thing to play, or do you think it actually helps your creativity having more toys?
It's a little bit of both, because you do fall into those moments of ‘There's just too much!’ But for the most part for me, if I need something and have an idea for a sound, it's easy to go and reach for, like (pointing everywhere) 'Oh, that's what I hear; the Juno 60 here, or the Selena here, the R 2,600…' these things do have an identity. When I'm creating from nothing, I’ll typically start with someplace very familiar. I'm not even looking in these directions or if I want to go here, it's like I'm very specific as to where I'm starting. But yeah, it can be overwhelming for sure. There's a lot of stuff in here.
You went to Paris recently to round out the Amory Wars story. Was that a case where you're eliminating a lot of that stuff to be creative in a specific or limited space?
Yeah, I went out to Paris with my wife for a writing retreat. We actually spent a couple of days there together. She ended up leaving, going off to Italy to work on a novel that she's writing. And I stayed behind in Paris where I actually sort of created the initial idea of The Amory Wars back in 1998. Every once in a while, I'll return to the city to just be inspired by it. Whether it's conceptually in the story world of Coheed, or musically.
While I was out there, I actually wrote a couple of ideas. Two of them became songs that will be on the new record. One of them happened to be 'Blind Side Sonny'.
Did you go with a plan to how you were going to end it, or just let the muses take you with a story that you've expressively told for over 20 years?
Yeah… I just let it come. I just wanted to write. That was the thing with this record; I was just writing and whatever sort of inspired me in life would really dictate what would happen in the story. Blind Side… for example; It has its place within the emotions of me as a person, but it also helped create a character in the story which becomes very important in the next record/moving forward in this arc of the Coheed world.
It felt like (previous 2024 dual single release) 'The Joke' and 'Deranged' had [Amory Wars bad guy] Al The Killer as cover art and sounded closer to familiar Coheed sounds, but with Blinde Side… there's a brand-new character on the front and a pretty different raw sound. Is that all intentional, or just the way you all naturally eclectically create?
Well, 'The Joke' was actually written initially for [previous 2022 album] Vaxis 2 and sonically it just didn't necessarily work. There were too many vibes that were too similar. So, it kind of took a backseat. This year we just released it just to get everybody excited. It's not really a part of the next record. It was just kind of a one-off. We thought it’d be fun connecting it to 'Deranged', which was very much written for the “Batman: Arkham City” video game soundtrack. We put those together, put out a single, and put them against our Amory Wars character that sort of resembles the Joker of Batman lore.
As a dedicated comic book author and fan, it must be mind-blowing to be given the opportunity to contribute creatively to official Batman stuff.
Yeah, that was actually a lot of fun for me. I typically write in a very honest way, then transform it into a piece of fiction that's mine. But to write for something pre-existing is a real treat, because I do love Batman!
Being a fan of that lore and being able to sort of play around with the duality of those two characters in a rock song… there's nothing better than trying to figure out ways to get fuzzy pedals to sound like swarms of bats flying around. I had a lot of fun writing 'Deranged' for sure.
I thought 'The Joke' lyrically worked really well with it, almost like the opposite perspective of 'Deranged'. That's why I think those two songs partnered really well.
I was blown away by the last album. It's truly a high watermark for you guys. It sounded like – impossibly – the band went up a level in skill and technical prowess on it as well. Did you find yourselves challenging each other to get better at your instruments, or was that just what came out naturally for it?
That's really just what came out. That record was a product of the pandemic, so we wrote that kind of remotely. A lot of the songs were written in this room. Some were written in the apartment that I was living in down the street. 'The Liar's Club' was written in a small apartment down the street. I was whispering the whole time.
You and I last spoke about 10 years ago around the last time that you toured Australia in 2016. You were just a smitten new dad who was telling me about one of the first times Atlas [Claudio’s son] came in the room and started dancing. Now he's singing on your albums! Life moves way too fast, and that example proves how much time’s really passed since you were last down under.
I know, I know! And we were supposed to come, I think in 2020 before Covid, but then that all shut that down.
Monolith Festival’s in Port Melbourne for the Victorian leg of the tour. Having run several successful Coheed and Cambria “Neverender” Cruises to rave reviews, do you reckon you could hire a boat there and do some nautical sideshows to give Aussies a taste of what that cruise is like? And how are the cruises anyway? They look phenomenal.
At first when the idea was proposed to me, I was not a fan. The idea of being on a boat, being on a cruise, it was not something that just seemed interesting to me. Everybody else was all aboard, no pun intended. I didn't want to be the curmudgeonly dude that's stopped it from happening. So, I was like, 'you know what? It's an experience. If it's not great, I did it and I can be done with it'.
What philosophically was it about it that you didn't want to do?
I don't know. I don't really love the water. I don't see myself as a cruiser necessarily, but I'll tell you man, the first one was so much fun. I had such a blast, and that's why we're doing it. This is now our third time doing it. I love what I do. I do. I'm not the type of person that doesn't listen to their own music. I write Coheed music because that's the music I want to hear.
It's fun for me to be around people that enjoy it too. I would walk the cruise ship at five in the morning and bump into the night owls and go to their rooms and meet their friends. I got so much pleasure out of it that! Here we are now doing it our third time. I still maybe might not consider myself a cruise person, but it doesn't feel like cruising. They really take care of us.
I can listen to my own music and fully separate myself from creating it too. If a song’s enjoyable, it doesn’t matter where it came from.
Right? You get that objective perspective that you don't get when you're making it. That's what I love about going back and revising records. I'm doing these ‘Neverender’ situations where we play the records front to back. It just reminds me that the music is an entry into a journal. That's truly what it is for me. It's like a time machine. I get reminded of who I was when I wrote them. There's something special about that. We’re really lucky that we get to do that with a history behind us.
Now I know that you're such a big Coheed fan, what are some of your favourite songs?
One of my favourites of all time is 'Gravity's Union', and the whole Vaxis 2 album.
I just find that record so special. I think putting that together was a big accomplishment for me as a writer. Putting that together. A lot of what's coming is really, really special too! And I've got to think, really think about other favourites... 'Wake Up' is such a special song,
I automatically cry when that song comes on. I'm surely not the first person to tell you that.
That song puts me back to when my wife and I were just dating (in the early-2000’s). It reminds me of the hotel we were staying in when I had to literally get on a plane and leave her. It was really tough. I can still see the light coming through the window of the hotel room that we were staying at when I had to wake up that morning. These songs are time machines. They're so special to me.
They say paintings mark space and music marks time. We’re nearly out of time for this chat, but I must ask the obligatory new album question first! How's the new album? Any upcoming goss that I should get out of you?
Tough to say… It's tough to talk about anything right now because in the months to come, stuff will start dropping. Blind Side is the first taste of what we're doing, and I think both the song and new character is very exciting for those who participate in both dimensions of what Coheed does. The character is super cool, and the song is rockin’!
[gallery type="rectangular" columns="2" ids="https://wallofsoundau.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/coheed-bris.jpg|,https://wallofsoundau.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/coheed-sideshow.jpg|"]
And lastly a parting message for Australia before I get out of your magnificent hair? What have you got to say after so long?
WATCH OUT, AUSTRALIA. PREPARE TO BE EATEN! I'm excited. It’ll be so much fun.
Thank you so much. You are one of my musical heroes and we share a birthday, so I greatly appreciate the time. Thank you so much. See you in a couple of weeks.
March 12 all the way! Sounds great. Yeah, come by and say hi. Be well!
Interview by Todd Gingell @gingerly_done
Coheed & Cambria return for Monolith Fest + showhows (all tickets here). Additional production hold tickets have since been released for Brisbane following the festival’s initial sell-out. Be quick.
Monolith 2024
November 2 @ Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane
November 9 @ PICA, Melbourne
November 11 @ Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
