Coheed: Neverender Night One!!

Some background. Emo/metal/progressive rock powerhouse Coheed and Cambria created a plan to play all four of their albums, in four consecutive days in New York City; one album per day. Tonight Vicky and I went to see night one, in which they played their first album, "The Second Stage Turbine Blade," in its entirety. They even played an encore of songs off other albums ("In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth," "Welcome Home," and "No World for Tomorrow").

I was really looking forward to tonight's show for a few reasons. One, I had only seen them once on tour for this album (I have seen them at least twice in support of each other album), and it was only a 30-minute set on the Warped Tour. So it was cool to hear songs I'd never heard played live from my favorite band. But second, because of the nature of the shows, I knew it would be something that really attracted the hardcore. People were making plans on message boards to travel from far and wide to these shows; this was going to be quite an event.

I won't talk about the set list, since they played exactly the songs off the album in order. However, I will say there were a couple mishaps. It seemed like new drummer Chris Pennie fucked up the intro to "Time Consumer"... though the band as a whole could have just decided to change it up. Also, this album has a lot of double-tracked vocals, and so they had a keyboard player who tried to sing those parts... unfortunately singer Claudio Sanchez has a crazy voice and very high range, and this backup singer didn't seem up to the task.

But other than that, it was a great show. The band threw in some crazy added solos here and there, which the fans voraciously ate up, but overall kept things mostly by-the-book in terms of replicating the album. Personal highlights for me were "Time Consumer" and "33," two songs I love but had never heard live... but overall the whole thing was just great.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment, "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth!"