Coheed and Cambria - Vaxis Act III: The Father Of Make Believe (Album Review)

Coheed & Cambria: Vaxis Act III: The Father Of Make Believe
Released: March 14, 2025

Lineup

Claudio Sanchez // Vocals, guitars, keyboards, synths
Travis Stever // Guitars
Zach Cooper // Bass
Josh Eppard // Drums

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Reaching milestones like 30 years as a band and making it to album ten (eleven in this case) are not things to throw away lightly. I’d say that the members of Long Island rock band Coheed and Cambria had no idea when they came together in the form of Shabutie back in 1995 that 30 years later, they’d still be making music, having amassed an enormous fanbase around the world, and built a passionate community around the accompanying comic/graphic novels. It’s honestly a bit crazy when you really think about it, but here we are in 2025 with the bands 11^th full length album Vaxis III: The Father of Make Believe and boy, it is a doozy.

Full disclosure, I love this band to pieces. Having fallen in love with them back in 2003 with In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, I have followed them avidly ever since and obsessed over every addition to their catalogue along the way. 

Most Coheed albums begin with an overture or an introduction of sorts and The Father of Make Believe is no exception to that, with a little twist. Opener ‘Yesterday’s Lost’ brings the listener into the album with a soft and mournful piano theme that quickly evolves into a reprise of ‘The Hollow’ from The Afterman: Ascension, before segueing into an acoustic-led piece backed by a wonderful horn arrangement. 

From the delicate beginning of the album, we jump straight into a tonne of brightness with ‘Goodbye Sunshine’ and upbeat energy with ‘Searching for Tomorrow’, two songs that are bound to be mainstays in the live set moving forward and two choruses that you’ll have rolling around your head for days on end. I swear I listened to ‘Searching for Tomorrow’ at least 30 times when they dropped it as a single because the chorus is such an earworm and the bridge section is absolutely the right kind of nasty.

The title track ‘The Father Of Make Believe’ is an epic full of intricate guitar parts and layers of vocal wizardry before we take a breather of sorts with ‘Meri Of Mercy’, which brings the dynamic all the way down to a beautiful piano and vocal introduction before the band kicks things back up. It’s a nice uplifting groover that offers a nice palette cleanser before the biggest twist of the album.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t get ‘Blind Side Sonny’ at all when it dropped out of nowhere. A two-minute rocker that just hits with a tonne of attitude and leaves you wondering what just happened. However, in the context of the album sequence, I’m happy to say that it makes so much more sense. Especially because it leads directly into the even weirder ‘Play the Poet’, which kicks straight in with the breakbeat from the ‘Blind Side Sonny’ outro and features a tonne of angular melodic movement and effect manipulated vocals. It’s almost a really nice throwback to the energy of a track like ‘Al The Killer’ or ‘Holly Wood The Cracked’, but on steroids because the bridge section hits like a fucking freight train that no one saw coming. It’s explosive and I was a little in shock when I heard it for the first time. God damn boys, you didn’t need to go THAT hard.

After the one-two punch of those tracks, we’re met with another groover in the form of ‘One Last Miracle’, a mid-tempo track that’ll have your head bobbing. It’s a nice reprieve from the aforementioned onslaught and helps to transition the dynamic for ‘Corner My Confidence’, which is very clearly the ballad of the album and one I wasn’t quite prepared for.

We love a ‘heart on my sleeve’ acoustic Coheed ballad and ‘Corner My Confidence’ might quickly take the top billing over the likes of ‘Wake Up’, ‘Ghost’ or ‘Pearl Of The Stars’. It is so beautifully vulnerable and moving, and Claudio Sanchez’s vocal performance just delivers in every possible way. Just inject that shit into my veins because I’ll never get sick of songs like this. If your heartstrings hadn’t already been yanked at full force with ‘Corner My Confidence’, the track moves straight into ‘Someone Who Can’, the third single from the album. It almost feels like Coheed writing the lead track from a John Hughes movie and it’s a really heartwarming listen.

The lyrics and the accompanying music video really exemplify that Claudio went into writing this album looking back at the band’s legacy, where they’ve come from and how much they’ve grown.

When the band announced The Father of Make Believe, the first thing I noticed was the closing four tracks of the album were a four-part saga called ‘The Continuum’, which had me VERY excited. Coheed aren’t strangers to closing albums with epics, often opting for lengthy progressive tracks that take the listener on wild journeys before culminating in an epic closer. The track lengths for the four songs aren’t crazy long, but the songs themselves are certainly high impact. ‘Welcome To Forever, Mr Nobody’ is funky and angular. ‘The Flood’ is an anthem that’s going to be awesome to hear live with thousands of fans singing along. ‘Tethered Together’ is a slow burn that begins with a reprise of a very familiar theme from ‘Domino The Destitute’ before building into another epic that will have you belting at the top of your lungs.

Now, ‘So It Goes’ certainly wasn’t the album closer I was expected at all but it kind of works perfectly. On the back of the three previous epics, the track is a bouncy, playful and joyous vibe that you’d almost envisage as the perfect addition to a Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. It feels like it would be a really satisfying end to the Vaxis saga as a whole honestly, but before you get to linger on that thought for long, you’re met with a rich and triumphant string arrangement that culminates in a reprisal of themes from ‘Pretelethal’ from The Afterman: Descension. Something tells me we’re far from done and all the nods to The Afterman have me all levels of hyped for whatever is to come next.

By the time a band hits even 20 years, they’re usually phoning in albums to keep things moving and playing the hits to keep the nostalgic listeners happy. Coheed are 30 years in and not only are sounding invigorated and inspired, they’re delivering some of the best work to date. As a listener of well over 20 years at this point, I would happily put The Father of Make Believe up as a top three Coheed album and I have no doubt it will fill the hearts of fans both new and old.

Long may these nerdy rockers reign!

Rating: 9.5/10
‍Vaxis Act III: The Father Of Make Believe drops March 14, 2025. Pre-order here
Review by Nicholas Simonsen @blackechomusic

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