photo credit: weworemasks

Coheed and Cambria has kept busy for the last year. After their 2010 album, Year of the Black Rainbow, was met with lukewarm reviews from their fanbase, it seems like that was just the kick they needed to get things groovin’ again. In 2011, the band’s original drummer, Josh Eppard, left his new band (Terrible Things) and confirmed his reunion with Coheed and Cambria again, putting a heap of excitement back into the camp.

Co&Ca would then go on to release two albums in a year’s time, The Afterman: Ascension and The Afterman: Descension. The two parter brought plenty of fans back on board, myself

included. And I was definitely excited to see what these guys had in store for Houston.

Hit the jump for the review.

-grizzly


photo credit: weworemasks

At 10:15, Coheed & Cambria took the stage, which was illuminated by hourglass-type fixture and dressed with about 10 female mannequins. An elaborate stage and dramatic lighting is perfect for a band like this, who have been known over the years to kick their sets off in an equally dramatic fashion with stadium-sized songs. They set things off with the introductory track “Pretelethal,” in which Claudio Sanchez donned a ukelele and transitioned quickly into “Sentry the Defiant,” employing the singalong immediately. Behind me, I could hear the rumbling of about a 1000 different voices singing along, giving the room an unbelievable buzz and excellent concert atmosphere.

After having toured in 2011 for their debut album Second Stage Turbine Blade, the band bypassed their former discography in order to showcase the two albums worth of new songs they have between Ascension and Descension. This mattered not to the fans, who soaked in the one-two punch of “Vic the Butcher” and “Evagria the Faithful.” However, I’m sure many of the folks have beef with their tease of “Delirium Trigger” before launching into “The Crowing,” a personal favorite of mine.

photo credit: weworemasks

Prior to the show, the band has set up a VIP-access performance, and worth noting is that this “VIP” line seemed to be about a couple of hundred people, who had paid to be there. This is the kind of dedicated fanbase that packed the floor of the Bayou Music Center and enjoyed the old jams like “No World for Tomorrow” and “A Favor House Atlantic.” The same fanbase was plenty welcoming to the tour openers in Russian Circles (pictured above) and Between the Buried and Me. All three bands seemed to embrace the more prog-side of rock and roll, filling the night with as much energy as they did interludes. Russian Circles played a short thirty minute set, with masterful musicianship carrying the load for the instrumental metal act from Chicago. North Carolina’s Between the Buried and Me were the sore thumb of the three, pulverizing the crowd with technical (and very heavy) metal and guttural vocals, which included tracks from their newest LP, The Parallax II: Future Sequence.

The show was a wondrous gathering of bands that “are really good at playing their instruments,” to say the least. Coheed and Cambria had a superb display of musicianship and technicality to complement their openers, all of which are veteran bands and musicians in their respective music scenes and genres. During the set closer “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3,” the band threw in an extended interlude before the last chorus just to show off those chops one last time. Pre-encore, Claudio Sanchez launched into a speech about how 12 years ago, he never imagined he’d be where he was – and that was right there on stage performing to the legion of Coheed and Cambria faithful.

[SETLIST]

Pretelethal
Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry the Defiant
A Favor House Atlantic
Goodnight, Fair Lady
No World for Tomorrow
The Crowing
Key Entity Extraction III: Vic the Butcher
Key Entity Extraction IV: Evagria the Faithful
The Afterman
Here We Are Juggernaut
Dark Side of Me
In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
—
Wake Up
The Hollow
Key Entity Extraction I: Domino the Destitute
Welcome Home