Coheed and Cambria leans heavily into ‘Afterman’ albums in St. Louis

Coheed and Cambria returned to The Pageant on September 25th for a sold-out stop on their This Is Our War Tour, with The Home Team making good use of their opening slot. The Seattle-based band has spent the last few years mixing pop, rock, and heavier influences together, releasing their newest album It Lives, It Changes earlier this summer. The Home Team‘s cleaner, more upbeat sound was a pretty easy fit alongside Coheed, without sounding too much like the band everyone was waiting to see.

Coheed and Cambria released their tenth studio album The Father of Make Believe in 2025, followed later that year by an expanded New Entities Edition with four additional songs. Interestingly, the band’s St. Louis set didn’t spend much time on the newest record at all.

Instead, the band went deep into older material — particularly the two ‘Afterman’ albums.

“A Favor House Atlantic”, “Blood Red Summer”, and “Devil in Jersey City” came early on in the night, but a big portion of the set was devoted to songs like “Domino the Destitute”, “Evagria the Faithful”, “The Hard Sell”, “Number City”, and “Gravity’s Union”.

There were also a few real surprises for longtime fans. “Away We Go” received its live debut, “Gravity’s Union” was played for the first time since 2019, and “Iron Fist” returned for the first time since 2013.

Even the VIP performance before the main show included the live debut of “Subtraction”.

Claudio Sanchez is still immediately recognizable the second he starts singing and the band sounded tight without making the longer, more complicated songs feel overly polished. Coheed’s music can get pretty dense on record, but live, a lot of those songs become much more direct.

The show briefly stopped during “The Liars Club”, when someone in the pit needed medical attention. After things were handled, the band stayed onstage rather than doing the usual walk-off before the encore, continuing into the final stretch.

For a band with 10 albums and more than two decades of material to work with, Coheed and Cambria‘s St. Louis set did a good job of avoiding the obvious route. There were plenty of familiar songs, but enough deep cuts and rarely played material to give fans unexpected twists and turns.

Photography by Sean Rider

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