#this took an embarrassingly long time to make 😭😭 im literally a STEM girlie i never learnt how to string a coherent sentence together

[livejournallegacy]

Coheed and Cambria primer for L.S. Dunes fans

Travis Stever and Claudio Sanchez are the two core members of Coheed and Cambria and have been since the bands inception in 1999. Coheed primarily makes concept albums based on Claudio's sci-fi comic series The Amory Wars.

The basic plot is that Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon are fighting against aspiring dictator Wilhelm Ryan, who started The Amory Wars with the goal to rule over the solar system Heaven’s Fence. Their son Claudio (we love a self insert) is a seemingly normal kid dragged into the fight, who may turn out to be the prophesied saviour.

"But what do they sound like?" Coheed mixes elements from a lot of genres and are most often described as prog rock. I would personally be more inclined to classify them as power metal or like, prog emo (emo used as a sort of catch all term for various pop influenced rock, metal, punk and hardcore music styles of the 00s). If you like Dunes there's definitely something in their discography you'd enjoy, especially given how similar Claudio and Anthony's vocals are.

You don't need to follow the storyline to enjoy their music though, here's a few of their more radio friendly songs I would recommend a new listener to start with:

Favor House Atlantic - every 00s band has at least one pop punk song

Ten Speed - slightly more prog influence, still pretty pop punk

Welcome Home - it's their most popular song for a reason

Shoulders - newer song, hard rock/metal vibes

Bonus: Jesse's Girl 2 ft Rick Springfield - Claudio wanted to write a sequel to Rick Springfield's 1981 classic Jesse's Girl, so he did.

If we define 'rock bands from the New York Metro area 1999-2002' as a scene, Coheed and Cambria were right there in the trenches with bands like Midtown, Taking Back Sunday, Thursday and My Chemical Romance. They were tour with these guys and most of the other "bandom" bands (The Used, Fall Out Boy, AFI etc.) and were hanging out in the background somewhere for a lot of iconic moments, like Warped 2004 (featured in LOTMS).

For example, you have probably seen a few photos of Adam and Gerard from backstage at the 2005 Concert for Tsunami Relief:

The handsome guy on the left is Claudio Sanchez ☝️

Or the 2003 Thursday/Thrice/Coheed tour which gave us some of the worlds most important images courtesy of Justin Borucki:

In a roundabout way Coheed is actually responsible for giving MCR their first big break. In 2002 they were opening for Jimmy Eat World and had to cancel a show last minute, they were replaced by MCR who had only released Bullets a month prior.

From Dan Ozzi's Sellout

So from what I can tell Travis has known Thursday and MCR since at least 2002 and Anthony since at least 2005 (Coheed/Thrice/Circa Survive tour). More recently Travis played with Thursday for their Signals V2 livestream (2021) and Coheed opened for MCROKC (2022).

I know I missed heaps of stuff but I hope this helps at least one Dunes fan understand Travis a little more! His connections to the band go just as deep as any of his bandmates but are a lot less straightforward.

#this took an embarrassingly long time to make 😭😭 im literally a STEM girlie i never learnt how to string a coherent sentence together #inspired by the tireless work of the thursday tumbrinas especially the dissertations provided for us by geoffrard #travis stever #ls dunes #l.s. dunes #coheed and cambria #travis #dunes #coheed #long post