Armed with their introspective, post-hardcore poetry, LA DISPUTE [7] seem a rather strange choice to open for one of rock’s most progressive and elaborate outfits. Yet the crowd warm to the Michigan five-piece, led by Jordan Dreyer’s dense and breathless sung/spoken-word ramblings, who deliver muscular, off-kilter rhythms bristling with shades of Glassjaw and Dismemberment Plan. COHEED AND CAMBRIA [8] played this very venue only six months ago but from the rabid reaction of the crowd, you’d think years had passed since they last graced these shores.
Screams and fists fill the air as the band, fronted by Claudio Sanchez, his epic curls bouncing, tear into a frantic In Keeping The Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3. This is a band that command adoration and you know you have a crowd on your side when one half are singing your riffs while the rest bawl your lyrics like their lives depend on it. In fact, at times you feel Claudio could have kept his mouth shut all night so loud and word-perfect are the crowd’s renditions of a giddy Blood Red Summer and A Favor House Atlantic.
This short summer jaunt of three dates is another opportunity for the band to showcase material from most recent album The Color Before The Sun. Their poppiest effort to date, it also marks the first time the band have stepped away from long running sci-fi storyline The Armory Wars. As a result, these might not be the most ambitious songs in Coheed’s arsenal, but they’re certainly amongst the sharpest and most focused and it’s heartening to hear the newer songs being greeted as rapturously as old friends. Here To Mars and Eraser sound thrilling and surprisingly at home nestled amid the apocalyptic idiosyncrasies of Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry The Defiant and classics like Ten Speed (Of God’s Blood And Burial) and recent single, You Got Spirit, Kid is a slice of pure, unbridled joy that fans have clearly taken to their hearts. The encore includes a vibrant cover of Nirvana’s Drain You, delivered in Claudio’s breathless, incomparable vocals. But then with all curveballs thrown, it’s the histrionics of Welcome Home that brings the evening to a glorious, theatrical end, proof, as if we needed it, that Coheed And Cambria are still out of their prog-tinged world.
