IN KEEPING SECRETS OF SILENT EARTH - 3

After a very satisfying debut, Coheed and Cambria return with an almost 70-minute album, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, complete with high-budget production, and even some speculation that it syncs with a Lord of the Rings movie (it's no Dark Side of the Moon, but there are some neat, mostly lyrically, things here and there). The gritty sound is gone, and a crisp prog rock/metal/pop sound trancends here. For brevity's sake, as well as my time's, I will avoid doing the track-by-track analysis.

The album opens with a telephone ring, footsteps, and the sound of a woman picking up the phone and saying hello, and then immediately moves into an orchestral version of a motif that was introduced on the band's debut. After some noises that resemble a gust of wind and fire, the sound fades as we here a man say Hello Apollo, where should I begin? And thus begins the third chapter in the saga. This album has some killer, dynamic mini-epics: the title track, "The Crowing," "The Light & the Glass," and "21:13," which is this album's bonus track. These pieces show off the band's songwriting abilities while avoiding pretention and technical bravado. These guys can do it, but they show great restraint here. It would be nice to see some flair, but we have other bands for that. Coheed and Cambria puts emphasis on melody on top of a solid rhythmic foundation. We see some overt pop songs in "Three Evils," "Blood Red Summer," and "A Favor House Atlantic," but they are all quite good songs, and in the context of the rest of the album, as well as the concept, they help create a diverse yet coherent record. Three of the tracks in the second half of the album are part of a mini-suite called "The Velorium Camper." The tracks don't go together musically, but the purpose of the suite is to focus the group of songs on a subplot. This type of structure will appear at the end of each of their next two records. They are unified only by their lyrics. The first song is a 70s rock song complete with cowbell, the second is a song that is dark but melodic, and the third is a melodic punky song again with a dark feel. The other track, "Cuts Marked in the March of Men," is a short but well constructed song.

The key to enjoying this band might very well be to take them as they are and not what you hope/expect them to be. They are melodic, dynamic and memorable. Even if they did have the potential to do more, this remains to be a fantastic album in itself. Maybe they will evolve into that band we all see in them, but that doesn't make this album bad by any means. I personally think the variety of styles works for them, and in fact if I want a fix of well constructed pop music, I can get it here among other great songs. I would rather listen to these pop songs than a Rush pop song any day. Great stuff start to finish. I'll give it 4 1/2 stars again, but this time I'm rounding up.