(Roadrunner)The prog rockers delivered some of their most concise and infectious songwriting without the self-indulgence of The Unheavenly Creatures
Conceptually,
New York prog rockers Coheed and Cambria seem inaccessible. The entirety of their 20-year output, save a one-off detour in 2015, has taken place in a sci-fi cosmos called Heaven’s Fence. What started as a way for frontman and comic book geek Claudio Sanchez to express himself has spiralled into a mess of metanarratives with countless characters.
On Vaxis – Act II: A Window of the Waking Mind, the band mercifully juxtapose a sprawling concept with some of their most concise and infectious songwriting to date. The sequel to 2018’s Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures is the second part of a planned pentalogy, but it eschews the self-indulgence of its 80-minute predecessor. In its place are no-frills pop anthems such as Beautiful Losers and Shoulders, which have choruses that fly higher than a rocketship.