Coheed and Cambria quakes St. Louis with Taking Back Sunday

If you’ve been keeping up with the shows I have been covering this summer, you know that we have had a string of insanely hot outdoor shows here in St. Louis lately. It’s been a grind shooting shows in 95+ degree heat. I like to think of it as training for the impending heat death of our planet. Anyways, I’m happy to report that the weather for Coheed and Cambria was actually perfect.

It was an absolutely beautiful night in Casino-land, out west of St. Louis.

The skies were clear and a light breeze tickled the air as fans started to fill in the St. Louis Music Park for a night of guitars screaming in their faces and more long-haired head-banging than a Whitesnake video. The first band to play the night was St. Louis locals Foxing. The hometown indie rock band wailed into the mic and put on a lively show to warm up the crowd.

Following them was the pop punk heavy-hitters of the 2000s, Taking Back Sunday. The band showed that, though it’s been a while since the post-hardcore hayday, plenty of millennials are now able to afford concert tickets for the emo bands who can still deliver a crazy show. And Taking Back Sunday did just that. Lead singer Adam Lazzara’s performance brought me right back to middle school, watching the music video for “MakeDamnSure” on MTV.

You can always tell how dedicated a band’s fanbase is by the people who show up to get front row for a show. Judging Coheed and Cambria by their rail-riders gave the impression that these people had been pulled into something deep. T-shirts from every decade of the band’s 30-year career could be seen on bodies that were smiling and covered with tattoos of the band’s imagery. Coheed and Cambria is a band that goes deeper than the music. In fact, the music is just a narration for frontman Claudio Sanchez’s comic book series, The Amory Wars. The band’s logo is a symbol from the comics, representing an energy stream connecting the planets in that universe.

All but one of the band’s albums are sagas narrating the comics. 

I remember one of my good friends and roommates owning the comics back in my college days; I struggled to understand why a band would have a comic. Looking in the faces of the front row at this show finally made it click for me: when you find something you love, you just want more of it. And Sanchez gives his fans an endless pit of content and lore, in multiple mediums, to dive into. Listen to the music while you drive to work. Read the comics when you have some time to yourself. Go see the band in person if you want to get your face melted and your hair shaken up. Just do it.

Photography by Sean Rider

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