GOOD APOLLO, I'M BURNING STAR IV, VOLUME TWO - NO WORLD FOR TOMORROW

After seeing them at Warped Tour and giving a good few months of listening to their second album In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, I was a mild fan of Coheed & Cambria. Sure, there was nothing complex in that release, but there were plenty of interesting parts. When I found they were coming out with a new album, I got a bit excited. The first time I was able to get to a mall and buy the CD I did.

What a horrible dissapointment. This one's just full of rock songs, nothing much more. The sophomore album did tend to lean towards basic alternative rock, but even that was catchier and it definetely had more interesting moments. This album was a chore to listen to. I am confused as to why they are labeled progressive. Is it because of the concept in the albums, or because of a few songs that go past the six minute mark? Is it because of the suites (none of which really seem to go together as a suite)? I'm not sure. I'll give a track-by-track review of this.

The Reaping is an intro to the album. Nothing terribly exciting. For a one minute intro, it is rather repetitive. Even for a 'creative' album, there's not much going on here. A couple explosions, acoustic guitars.

That turns into No World for Tomorrow. I will admit that the guitar riff at the beginning is quite interesting, but the rest of the song is very basic and doesn't really capture. It's a simple verse/chorus/verse/chorus type song. There really isn't much going on here.

The Hound (of Blood and Rank) does even worse. It starts with a quiet repeating keyboard chord. When the instruments come in, it turns into another alternative/rock song that doesn't do much. Normally when I hear these types of songs, I'm fine listening along a couple times, but a lot of these songs aren't even all that catchy. It can't even grab me at the first listen. The lyrics are also very distracting. Again, nothing exciting.

Feathers is the 'pop' song on the Coheed album. One thing about C&C fans is they always say that there are pop songs on there albums along with proggy songs. I have no clue what they mean by proggy songs, since really the proggy songs are just pop songs that aren't catchy. Either way, this is a pretty catchy song, but for their 'pop' songs this one lacks energy. I can't see myself going to one of their shows and enjoying myself listening to this song. Give me A Favor House Atlantic any day.

The Running Free seemed like a pretty good listen at first. It's got a pretty interesting intro, and the beginning verse is pretty cool. However, this one being pretty catchy does lend itself to repeated listenings to it until you've heard it way too many times. I guess it's got more energy than Feathers, but it's another basic alternative rock song.

After the alternative rock energy of the previous track, C&C gives the listener Mother Superior a ballad like track. It's mostly acoustic guitars. It has quite a few creative moments, especially with a bit of dissonance in the chords in the chorus. However, with the slow pace and lack of direction, this track gets pretty boring especially with its past-six minute length. Not too much happens in this track.

The next two tracks sound basically the same. Gravemakers & Gunslingers and Justice and Murder. They seem to fall in a hard rock vein with 'catchy' choruses that aren't really all that catchy anyways. More like pop with somewhat distorted guitars. One notable thing about the former is while I was trying to appreciate this album after a couple listenings was a friend of mine. As I played the album in the band room, he improvised along with it on the piano. After hearing this one a few minutes, he turned to me and said, This one has the same chord progression as another track. Sure enough. I turned it to No World for Tomorrow and I heard the same chord progression (Dm, C, Bflat, Am). This lost a ton of credibility on me.

Even though the next tracks are said to be in a suite, I have yet to see much similarity between the tracks. After all, all of C&C's music is a concept, so how can certain songs be more conceptual? That seems to be beyond me. Anyways, disregard the fact that the final 5 tracks are supposed to be a suite, because I don't consider them much of anything beyond 5 songs that happen to be on the same album.

That being said, the first one of the suite, The Fall of House Atlantic is pretty cool. The repeated acoustic guitar part is very interesting and has nice energy. A epic choir-ish sound is brought in, and there are some cool drums. Short and sweet. A good addition to the album.

The next song Radio Bye Bye is another catchy pop song that really isn't all that catchy. Nothing jumps out, even less so than the other poppy songs on this album. In the bridge section we are treated to more signature Coheed oh ohs (which I failed to mention, show up far too much in the band's music). Again, there really isn't much to this track.

The past few regular length songs have been nothing but basic filler songs. This one is an exception. The End Complete is a long filler song. There's nothing going on in this one. Really. At this point in the album, I'm wondering why I'm listening to this. It's just a terribly boring 7 minute verse/chorus/verse/chorus song. The verses are filled with basic strumming, and the chorus goes into a slower beat and overall sounds uninspired. This is part of the reason why I think this album is so bad.

The Road and the Damned is a pretty little ballad. I guess it's got a nice chorus, and it's overall sound seems to remind me of stuff like Aerosmith's I don't wanna miss a thing. It's got a decent orchestra type of a sound behind it. It's nice that it's short. I've pretty much summed up the song by saying it's like your regular classic rock ballad with an orchestrated sound. Not much else to it.

If I ever want to end an album with a bit of aimless noise, I'll do it with a song that sounds like On the Brink. This track has absolutely no direction. Some compare the overall atmospherics to Pink Floyd, and I really cannot compare the beauty of Pink Floyd with Coheed and Cambria. There's just no atmosphere in this song that sounds as moving as anything the former has done. After a couple of verses, there's a terribly awkward key change that does not do anything to make the song much better. After the key change and that 'pretty part', the instruments drop out, and then everything turns heavier. The drums pick up. There's a terribly repetitive shouting of Heil at this point (I think it repeats for 57 times! Dang!). Finally, after all that terrible repetition, it drops out into some faux-jazzy piano. As if they cannot tag on another disjointed section into this album, the drums pop in again and a pointless guitar solo comes on. This fades out for the next minute into some organs. An echoed drum stops all the instrument and closes the album. Finally.

I was considering making this a 2 star album, because after all it had a couple moments of creativity. However, I realized that when I bought this album, I was a fan of Coheed, and I thought this album was so boring to sit through. There are no surprises, it's basically a repetitive boring rock record with maybe a smidge of creativity, but the creative parts are put in such awkward and unfitting places that they might as well not be there at all. I wouldn't reccomend this album to anyone, not even Coheed and Cambria fans.