Coheed and Cambria – The Dark Sentencer

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Coheed and Cambria have returned with the expansive, space epic-inspired song “The Dark Sentencer.” The track itself has been broken into two unique parts: a short prologue and the aforementioned track itself. The prologue sets the stage for where this story takes place in the universe that Coheed has created through a multiple album series.

The prologue begins with a gentle piano playing, and then eventually the silences breaks for the narrator to say:

Know now there is no time, space between the Well & Unknowing. Our story starts there. Well into our future, yet far beyond our past. In a romance between a pair of Unheavenly Creatures. The Five Houses of the Star Supremacy have privatized the detention zones of the galaxy. These planetary prison pits reassembled from the cracked worlds of the Great Crash. Which brings us to our stage. Where the light must learn to love the black. The Dark Sentencer. It begins with them, but ends with me. Their son, Vaxus.
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Still with Coheed on this one?

Of course, for the casual listener of Coheed and Cambria, there is still plenty of solid rock to go around, and those who are completely entrenched in the story itself are in for quite the treat. Claudio Sanchez seems more confident than ever on this track that touches upon several pieces of the back story and introduces some new elements as well.

In the first verse of the main song, Sanchez belts out:

Here, emotions behold/You’ve entered a Hell where the Devil is made of gold
Please, don’t run your mouth/The questions before have no place in this haunted house
Reveal your selfish pleasure/One more time run for good measure
In the answer you hold/Time would be better off if our souls had been sold
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Immediately with these lyrics we are transported back to the universe of In Keeping Secrets in Silent Earth… and are given a few other clues about where this story fits into the bigger picture (which already was pretty massive to begin with). In the chorus, the words “Welcome Home” are used very prominently and purposefully to help bring the audience back to their two most popular albums in the early part of their catalog.

The instrumental approach on this track is fairly familiar from what we have come to expect from Coheed and Cambria, but the guitar work in particular is the true “gift” of this song from their upcoming album. Several guitar solos rip through between the verses and show just what this rock band has left in the tank. By the time you get to the end of this epic and near 10-minute, two part song, you are already looking back to their previous albums that made you fall in love with the band, while still keeping one eye on the future of what is yet to come on the next chapter of Coheed.

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