Coheed and Cambria plays a sold-out show at the House of Blues on Wednesday, April 26In 2005, Coheed and Cambria released their third and biggest record. It's certainly their longest title, but Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness is their greatest success too.
Twelve years later, the band is hitting the road for an anniversary tour celebrating that album, and reflecting on what they've been through since it was released.
For one, drummer Josh Eppard and original bassist Michael Todd both sat out on the first Good Apollo tour to deal with addiction. “It was a trying moment,” lead singer and guitarist Claudio Sanchez says. “The band almost broke up after the record was released and we hit the road, but we endured, and we knew how special this thing was that we had. We picked up the pieces and figured out a way to make it work.”
Eppard rejoined in 2011 and will get to play the album live this time. The same year, the band replaced Todd – who had resumed his job as bassist – with Zach Cooper.
“This is the most stable the band has been ever since those days," Sanchez says
In addition to their long anniversary tour, much of which is sold out, including the Dallas show at House of Blues on Wednesday, April 26, Coheed and Cambria are also reissuing Good Apollo on vinyl and releasing a new comic book series inspired by it.
This isn't the band's first dive into the comic book world. They have several, plus a novel. But their space opera/fantasy plot had some holes in the Good Apollo period. At the time the album was released in 2005, Sanchez only had the budget to produce a small story. Now they're retelling and expanding on that story with a new 12-issue run of comic books that they've already begun rolling out.
"This isn’t just going to be a redo,” Sanchez says. “You’re gonna get a lot of answers to questions that the first one posed.” Time has treated Good Apollo well in other ways, too. Sanchez had fought hard for "Welcome Home" – an electrifying song that recalls the power of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and Rainbow’s “Stargazer” – to be the lead single. Sony, their record label at the time, insisted on "The Reaping."
“We knew the song was special,” Sanchez says. “When I initially wrote the riff, I was so excited. I knew the power of the song wasn’t in the lyrics. It was in the riff. That was my argument.”
But the fans recognized "Welcome Home" for the album standout that it was, and now at every Coheed and Cambria show you can expect to hear it. “As much as it’s this rock song that echoes its influences before it, it’s really a love song," Sanchez says. "It’s a mean love song; it’s the dark side of the spectrum of love.”
This show won't be Coheed and Cambria's first in Dallas. They've played everywhere from Gypsy Tea Room on the original Good Apollo tour, to the Palladium Ballroom, Starplex and the House of Blues on later tours.
"I’m kind of a recluse, so I really keep to the bus,” Sanchez says. “I did find a pretty cool vintage toy shop in Dallas called Dallas Vintage Toys that I’m looking forward to checking out the next time we’re in town. I think the older I get, the more interested I get in being more exploratory."
Coheed and Cambria, 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 26, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St., sold out, houseofblues.com/dallas.