THE SECOND STAGE TURBINE BLADE

I'm going to dive right into the song by song analysis, and skip right over the debate of if Coheed belongs on this site (I think I'm for it by the way). Warning: This album is not too progressive, but I will be reviewing this album by the songs, not level of progressiveness. If you can't get into music that is lacking in the progressive portion, this album is probably not for you.

Things start off with the title track, which is just a prelude of sorts. It could have been thought out much better, and was on Good Apollo. It's just under a minute long, so it's not painful to sit through in any way. It just doesn't really add anything. 6/10

We get our first taste of the musicians on Time Consumer. It starts off relatively chill, until the lyrics kick in, then the energy is shown. It still feels like they're being lazy about it though. On later albums you could tell that the band must have been jumping around in the studio with energy. Unfortunately the feeling does not paticurally come across on this song. When Claudio sings in his higher register it sort of comes across, but not enough to cover how simple this track is. Overall is comes across as being too repetitive, and it doesn't really hold up. Especially for the first track on an album. 6/10

Devil in Jersey City is a bit of an improvement. The energy is there, the chorus is catchy, it's fun. Sure it's just a rock song, but what's wrong with a rock song now and again? This is Coheed's bread and butter, a good song to start on because it's better than a lot of their other "rock songs" but not as good as some of their "progressive songs" (which are few and far between unfortunately, because they're actually very good at being progressive when they want to be) 8/10 Everything Evil is more of the same, which is a growing trend in this album. This one does feature some good lyrics though. Unfortunately, the chorus does not really stand up to the cool feel of the verses which kind of annoys me. There is a progressiveish bridge that features some (a?) time shift(s) I'd have to listen again to be sure though. Claudio goes up vocally after the bridge in a good way. His voice becomes very singsongy, as heard on the later Always And Never. 6/10 Because I can't get over the incredibly emo chorus/outro.

Delirium Trigger is much more listenable. It has a lot of changes in it. It almost feels a little schizo with all of the stop and goes, but I like the effect it gives off. Dynamics really help move this song along, and out of the normal Coheed structure. 7/10

Hearshot Kid Disaster brings back the emo side. I'm not cool with that. The less emo the better. And this song is emo to the max. 5/10 33 is another song with the whole emo vein going on, but this time, there is less intro, and more energy, so it covers for itself fairly well. There are VERY emo moments, but it's not too painful. 7/10

Junesong Provision is the song when it really hit me how annoying Claudio's singing can be. I'm pretty tolerant of it overall, and even like it at times; but on this song it only brings down a fairly good song. This song has the feel of a rough demo recorded by some local teenage rock band. Not good for professionals. 6/10

Neverender only continues the bad streak the album has going on. By this point in the CD I'm really struggling to continue listening.5/10

God Send Conspirator ends the album on a higher note at least. Still not very high at all, but at least the album has a decent closer. 7/10

I really can't get that into this album, and would not recommend it to the average progger. A couple buddies of mine are always proclaiming how great they are, but with exception of possibly Apollo I'm Burning. I really don't listen to Coheed at all.