blksqul's Full Review: The Second Stage Turbine Blade by Coheed & Cambria
I am going to warn you right now: this is not going to be a very thorough review of Coheed & Cambria's "Second Stage Turbine Blade." I simply do not know enough about the band or the sci-fi storyline slated to progress over four more albums. From what I've picked up, the complex narrative centers around a post-apocalyptic sniper gone murdering because he was forced to kill his son. The man and his gun will wreak vengeance, that much is understood, but the side stories and other character arcs are fairly clouded, and I'm not going to try to understand them too deeply. Besides, I don't really care what the full story is, when the music is this exciting.
I don't know much about this four-piece from New York, except they are superlative musicians all. There's not really a genre that fits this group, so they usually get labeled under the catch-all of "prog." That's supposed to be derogative, I think; it reeks of critical dismissal. But you walk away from this band for their meandering album titles, their girly sounding singer Claudio Sanchez, and their complex melodies at your peril. When I put this album on, it's the sun and the rain all at once.
I'm not going to attempt to get into every song here, because I think the album should be swum in over time until you find that you cannot scissor your legs in anything else, suspended in the sound. Not so much because you'll understand the story with more clarity, though that is possible -- more to gain appreciation of everything going on in the music, because there is a lot going on. As with Tool, another favorite critical target often labeled "prog," this band prefers long simmers and atmospheric melodies to straight-ahead, four-on-the-floor pounding and easily digestible ideas. Also, the production of this album is such that even when things do get hot and heavy, the band still sounds gentle. Not harmless, though. Never make that mistake. Give this album half a chance and it might tear out your heart for an emotional halflife. It will do so in the most subversive, natural way, too: with burning eyes, and a kiss.
The first proper song following an instrumental introduction is "Time Consumer." It has a penetrating chorus, cooed sweetly by Claudio, that wells with Abraham and Isaac overtones. "Me and my star, Matthew good night. You know, by law, when you'll be forgiven. Maria, my star. Matthew good night. You know, my Lord, when you'll be forgiven." I believe Matthew is supposed to be the sniper's child. Whether or not that is the case, the music is both pummeling and hotly feminine, and marks the first hooks that wormed into my brain from listening to this album over and over again.
Next is "Devil in Jersey City," which is bright and sweet enough that it should have enjoyed radio play. At least, the surface is sunlight. When you start rooting below, you'll hit a vein of crippling contradiction that would never find time on KROQ after The Offspring: "Don't let them scare you when you're down on the floor, bleeding, bastard. You'll be getting home real soon, and I'll pray for you high health."
Another highlight, "Everything Evil" builds earnestly, beginning soft and hidden, only to grow wings and fangs. This song exemplifies Coheed & Cambria's trait of not attacking the listener overtly with noise, even as they hit hard enough to make you believe they are. The end of this track includes a bittersweet flashback to childhood that is emotive enough to bring tears: "Would you run down past the fence...? And she screamed Claudio, dear Claudio, I wish god d*mn it we'll make it if you believe..." As Claudio's voice fades away, the guitars shoot flames, but quietly enough that it takes you a minute to realize how punishing the music has become.
Later on the album, "Junesong Provision" arrives to make a larger mess of things. It scrambles childhood memories with a corrupted sense of the sniper's present actions. It opens with images of the sun and innocence, but quickly falls into murky, subterranean depths. "I've spent so long sitting down here. Paper cut my heart in half and discard the evidence. When it's yours come send me the last half, dowsed in kerosene in a torched, blazed bloodbath."
I'm going to jump to the last track now. Please don't misunderstand and think there isn't grit and sweat and promise and hate lying among the other tracks. There is. Plenty of it. But I think publishing virtual walkthroughs of entire albums misses the point. The moment in a song that captures you -- a playful intro, a catch in the singer's voice, an unforgettable stew of words and melody -- matter more than digesting an album whole cloth. It's where an album metamorphasizes from an unknown monolith to a very human, welcoming presence.
That song would be "God Send Conspirator." It's a perfect little song-poem taken to epic lengths: giving off enough presence to attract curiosity without shedding all of its fruits. It also possesses a verse that has haunted me since the first I heard it. "Dear Maria, come sleep in your own bed. When eye meets eye be calm. Will lie here alone, locked the children in the floor."
Locked the children in the floor. For protection and security? For a sinister purpose? Take a moment to think about it, and you'll start hearing those children in other verses, in other songs, hunched in the dark and listening to the noise the adults are making above. Will they find succor and escape, or will they starve? I don't know. But the music soothes. Just as much as it blankets the hiding places over, it soothes.
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