Sci-fi band Coheed and Cambria set to play Everett

Published 10:40 pm Sunday, December 2, 2007

Travis Stever doesn’t sound crazy, just tired.

At 3 a.m. Friday, after playing a sold-out show at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, the guitarist was waiting to catch a plane to Florida. Later that afternoon, before taking the stage in Fort Meyers, he was giving an interview to support Coheed and Cambria’s new album.

“It’s one of them days, but it’s cool, it’s part of it,” Stever said, occasionally yawning. “Tonight I will sleep like a baby.”

Stever plays lead guitar for Coheed and Cambria, a group of madmen musicians who are crafting a sprawling sci-fi tale on their albums. This Thursday, the group plans to play Comcast Arena at the Everett Events Center for 107.7 The End’s Deck the Hall Ball.

Coheed and Cambria is a weird little band. They blend post-hardcore music — songs that are like throat punches — with progressive rock — geeky and longwinded tracks. It’s not an obvious combination. As for that sci-fi adventure, it tells the apocalyptic tale of a married couple and their children in a fight to save civilization. The group itself takes their name from the couple, Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon.

Add it all up, and you could call the band unique.

“It’s kind of daring way to go,” said Jacob McMurray, who knows both sci-fi and rock as senior curator at Seattle’s Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. “It either makes me think they’re having a huge amount of fun with this and taking it to the utmost extreme, or they’re actually crazy.”

Which gets us back to sleepy Stever, who doesn’t sound crazy.

“The concept is there, and the lyrics go along with it,” he said, “but it doesn’t dictate what we do musically.”

With one gold record to its name, Stever said the four-piece is melding a lot of influences. While the group often gets compared with Rush, in large part because of frontman Claudio Sanchez’s vocals, Stever said he is partial to Neil Young, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, among others.

“We are first and foremost a rock band, and I think that’s pretty plain to see,” he said.

Still, a holiday ball doesn’t seem the best place to see a group that designates its CDs as volumes. In Everett, Coheed shares the bill with Spoon, Modest Mouse and Jimmy Eat World, among others. For each group, that probably will mean shorter set lists — hardly the venue for an intricate story line.

But Stever said the sci-fi epic isn’t a factor during live shows. Instead, the group cherry picks some favorite old material while trotting out new tracks, such as “The Running Free,” their anthemic single, which they plan to play at Comcast Arena.

“The concept never comes into play when we play live,” he said.

The sweep of the band, from its propulsive songs to its sci-fi skew, has helped them build a fan base. Their latest CD, “No World For Tomorrow,” debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard charts.

Stever said the music draws people in, but the concept behind the albums can keep them coming back.

“There’s so much to choose from,” he said. “There’s so much to examine. … It’s kind of almost like a musical adventure, or at least that’s what I hope it is.”

Herald Writer Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455 or arathbun@ heraldnet.com.

Holiday concert

107.7 The End’s Deck the Hall Ball with Modest Mouse, Jimmy Eat World, Coheed and Cambria, She Wants Revenge, Spoon and the Kooks; 5 p.m. Thursday; Comcast Arena at the Everett Events Center, 2000 Hewitt Ave., Everett, www.comcastarenaeverett.com; 866-332-8499; $37.50.