Could someone please explain Coheed & Cambria and their whole convoluted concept/story?

Cafe Society
1

Most of the songs of Coheed and Cambria that I have heard, I have enjoyed. I’ve been vaguely aware of them since college, that is, 2005. I’ve also been vaguely aware that all of their songs supposedly tie into a vast science-fiction/fantasy story created by the singer, Claudio Sanchez; all of their albums are concept albums, and all of the lyrics in their songs have deeper meanings that relate to the plot of the story. Apparently there are comic books that tell the story, but these comic books came into existence after the band had already become popular.

Basically what I want to know is: is this whole thing (“Second Stage Turbine Blade”/“Amory Wars”/“Bag.On.Line Adventures”) a series of actual, tight, coherent stories that were written by Sanchez and then later adapted into his songs (or maybe the songs were written along with the stories)? Could they exist, and make sense, without the musical albums?

Or were the “stories” created later, after the music was composed, to try to expand on what were just vague, seemingly-profound but actually-mostly-meaningless lyrics that Sanchez thought sounded cool and interesting?

Never in my life have I heard of a band that had so much “mythology” created along with their music. Is there any kind of precedent in rock music for Coheed and Cambria? I know there have been “rock operas” but their catalog of music seems to go far beyond that.

Could someone please try to explain what the deal is with this band?

2

There a pretty good article on Wikipedia about the band. It looks like the stories and the comic books preceded the songs.

3

My understanding is that the “plotline” precedes the albums. It’s fairly incoherent in the songs themselves, but there’s enough to it that I believe he has had some general story in his head the whole time.

I’ve never seen another band build a “mythology” like that, but it’s basically just an expansion of the scifi story concept album, which Bands like Rush, Savatage, Styx, and Ayreon have certainly done before. C&C just took it further making a “concept discography” of sorts.

Miserably, the only similar thing I can think of is Insane Clown Posse’s “Joker Card” albums (everything up to the most recent), which they claim build a coherent mythology.

4

Wow I had no idea, I’ve only heard a song or two by them. Sounds sort of like The Mars Volta - their songs are unbelievably cryptic and have massive backstories behind them. Check out the album “Deloused in the Comatorium.”
They have an obsessive, cult-like following that dissect every word of their songs on their forums as well. The music is great also.