Coheed and Cambria’s Travis Stever loves Neil Young’s guitar playing for the feel alone

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAY 14, 2008

By Steve Newton

In its seven-year existence, Coheed and Cambria has seen changes in its lineup and sound, but the subject matter of its songs has remained constant. Over the course of four concept albums, the New York prog-rock outfit has followed an apocalyptic sci-fi story line about a messianic young man out to avenge his parents’ deaths, written by singer-guitarist Claudio Sanchez.

With its latest CD, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow, the band arrives at the final chapter in the saga, but it ain’t over yet, because Sanchez has a prequel planned. The quartet’s lyrical content will continue as a one-man show, and guitarist Travis Stever has no qualms about that.

“That’s Claudio’s story and he’s telling it,” says Stever, on the line from his home in Warwick, New York. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m more interested in what goes on musically.”

Even without Sanchez’s intricate tale of futuristic vengeance—which has also been released as a series of comic books called The Armory Wars—Coheed and Cambria would be a mighty impressive act. The guitar interplay between Sanchez and Stever is the group’s most tantalizing aspect; thrilling riffs and fiery progressions abound on tracks like “Feathers”, “The End Complete”, and No World for Tomorrow’s first single, “The Running Free”.

The duo’s stirring fretwork has not gone unnoticed by guitar-rock tastemakers, as its previous album, 2005’s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, was named one of the greatest guitar albums of all time by Guitar World magazine.

Although he’s honoured by the sentiment, Stever—whose band plays the Commodore on May 21—suggests that Jimi Hendrix’s Axis: Bold as Love would be far more deserving of the title. Besides Hendrix, his main men on guitar include the universally admired Jimmy Page and the vastly underrated Mick Ronson.

“Some of them are my favourites just purely for sounds and approach,” he relates. “Like, Neil Young is one simply for the fact that he just plays what he’s feeling, and if it doesn’t come out right, fuck it, it’s okay. Somehow it still works.”

Ace Frehley’s go-for-broke playing style also made the KISS picker a six-string hero in Stever’s eyes, though he’s equally impressed by the work that fantasy artist Ken Kelly did on such iconic KISS album covers as Destroyer and Love Gun. No World for Tomorrow’s CD booklet includes reproductions of oil paintings Kelly did based on Sanchez’s conceptualizations.

“It’s kind of a holler-back to when album covers really mattered,” says Stever of Kelly’s contributions, “when you would stare at ’em and really admire what was goin’ on.”

Some of Kelly’s images on the Coheed and Cambria disc are quite horrific, including fierce, fanged monsters and a cowboy with a demon horse and a half-melted face. That type of thing suits the band just fine, as they’re all major horror fans. But it’s the frightening aspects of everyday life that get examined on tracks like “Justice in Murder”, which was inspired by Sanchez’s aunt, a psychologist who passed away from Alzheimer’s disease.

“We took on doin’ benefits for it [Alzheimer’s research], and tryin’ to help out as much as we could,” says Stever, “because it’s something that affected Claudio’s family a lot—and actually the whole band, because she had sat down and done group therapy with us.”

The idea of hard-rockers seeing shrinks brings to mind the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster, wherein “performance enhancement coach” Phil Towle was repeatedly shown trying to keep major-label cash cow Metallica together.

“It wasn’t like that,” says Stever, “and we only did it once. We had been on tour for almost a year-and-a-half straight, going and going, living on amplifiers. What happened was we had gained a following, and it was important to us to keep going, but we kinda just needed to take a step back. She basically played a really great mediator, and was able to have us talk things out.”

All the therapeutic advice in the world couldn’t keep the band’s original lineup intact, though, as the rhythm section departed in June 2006. Bassist Michael Todd rejoined, but drummer Josh Eppard was eventually replaced by former Dillinger Escape Plan skin-basher Chris Pennie, who signed on in time to contribute to No World for Tomorrow. That’s not him playing on the CD, though; because of contractual obligations, Pennie couldn’t record, so producer Nick Raskulinecz (Rush, Stone Sour) hired the Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins to slam everything into place.

“Taylor did an amazing job,” says Stever, “but the fact is it’s Chris who built that whole thing with us, and he owns it still, you know.”