Album Review: Vaxis - Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures by Coheed and Cambria

A fluid collection of top-notch signature singles that espouses self-influence without self-indulgence. As with most of Coheed and Cambria's albums, it's difficult to find fault in their latest outing. The first in a new series of Amory Wars-based concept pieces that will somehow eventually relate to the tale of a creator who talks to his demented bicycle, The Unheavenly Creatures takes on the Colosseum-rattling chants of No World for Tomorrow, the pop hooks of In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, the electronics of Year of the Black Rainbow, and some grim edge from From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness. It's no shock that at this point in Coheed's career, their self-influence is readily apparent.

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Coheed and Cambria's previous outing, 2015's Color Before the Sun, was a deeply personal outing based on Claudio Sanchez's life experience; the band's discography was based on the Amory Wars up to that point. With The Unheavenly Creatures, Sanchez resurrects and resumes the episodic quality of the sprawling prog metal sci-fi space opera. Virtually all the outings in the Amory Wars saga are noteworthy, but here Coheed and Cambria sound rejuvenated.

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After an album away from their long-running sci-fi narrative, Coheed and Cambria return to the Amory Wars saga with The Unheavenly Creatures. Love and strife are afoot in a prison planet! And so are riffs: after two-plus decades, Coheed & Cambria can still trot out big blasts of metal-edged rock and prog with finesse. Unheavenly Creatures is chock-full, 78 minutes long, and all of it guided by Claudio Sanchez's evergreen voice.   After the brief, motif-introducing piano of "Prologue," "The Dark Sentencer" opens the album with almost eight ….

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