Rock

“It just feels different to me,” Claudio Sanchez, Coheed and Cambria’s longtime frontman, tells Billboard of his band’s recent run of studio output. “We’ve fallen into a groove that’s quite unique to the trajectory of Coheed. I don’t exactly know what it is, but I mean, it’s got to be the songs.”

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After breaking through in the mid-2000s as a prog-leaning rock group capable of reaching alternative, emo and hardcore listeners, Coheed and Cambria has spent two decades consistently releasing concept albums that are woven into Sanchez’s science fiction storyline, The Amory Wars, while also playing to large crowds for months on end. That story continues with The Father of Make Believe, the band’s eleventh studio album and the third installment of the Vaxis series, out today (Mar. 14) on Virgin Music Group.

Like its predecessor, 2022’s Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind, The Father of Make Believe finds Coheed and Cambria sounding reinvigorated as rock technicians and hook writers, with the world-building and songwriting finding the type of balance that helped the band expand their audience 20 years ago. The current version of Coheed (made up of Sanchez, guitarist Travis Stever, bassist Zach Cooper and drummer Josh Eppard) is also connecting commercially: “Someone Who Can,” the new album’s shimmering alt-rock anthem, has reached No. 26 on Alternative Airplay, the band’s first appearance on the chart since 2010.

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Ahead of the album release — as well as the band’s robust 2025 touring slate, topped by co-headlining amphitheater tours with Mastodon and Taking Back Sunday — Sanchez discussed how The Father of Make Believe came together, and why Coheed and Cambria has felt so fresh over the past few years.

When did you guys start working on this album?

Right after Window of the Waking Mind. Some of the songs — “Goodbye, Sunshine,” “One Last Miracle,” even bits of “Play the Poet” — were all lingering around. “Goodbye, Sunshine” was finished, I just didn’t think its identity matched what was happening with the Window of the Waking Mind, so I just held on to it. I had a really hard time seeing a follow-up to Window of the Waking Mind, because I was so proud of that record. So I was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna keep writing, and not with a record in mind. Let me collect material, and maybe the identity will reveal itself to me.” 

And so I eventually acquired 30 songs, and in that time, my uncle had passed away, and it was so sad. I was thinking of his wife, and the new life that she was about to embark on, and it reminded me a bit of my grandfather’s life, where he had lived 35-40 years without his wife. I just started asking those questions — What would life look like if I wasn’t here, or my wife wasn’t? Being who I am right now, at this stage of my life, am I proud of the things that I had done to get here? What does the future look like, if I’m lucky enough to have one? 

That’s what sort of defined the identity of the record is. When you think of songs like “Yesterday’s Loss” opening the record, it’s very much about losing somebody. And “Goodbye, Sunshine,” when I retooled it, it almost felt like standing at the funeral procession of Coheed and Cambria — coming out of losing a loved one, into standing at the graveside of the thing that’s afforded you the celebrations of life. I know it’s part of the [multi-album] concept, but it’s very two-sided, just like Window of the Waking Mind — that record, to me, is very much about parenting through the pandemic, but of course, it has its science fiction component to it, because that’s just what I do, you know? But this one is very much about the midlife questions that one poses to themselves when they get here.

One listener can fully dig into the lore, while another can focus solely on the melodies and lyrical themes. It sounds like you’ve been refining the process of creating those different levels of the band’s music.

Right. I mean, my favorite records, that’s what they did — they blossomed with time, and you found new meanings to them. That’s a big part of [title track] “The Father of Make Believe,” what the chorus means. As the deliverer of these messages, I can be whatever you want me to be, and however you want to perceive this, that’s how it can be.

Meanwhile, you guys currently have your biggest chart hit in over a decade. What’s that been like to experience?

It’s funny, because when I wrote “Someone Who Can,” the instrumentation was different. The melodies and the flow of the song are the same, but I’d written it as a solo song — I was toying with the idea of, “What if I did a Claudio Sanchez record?” So the initial construction of it was acoustic guitar, piano, a box drum, and myself singing. In my mind, it was like an Americana version, and there’s a demo of it that we might release.

I put that song in the session folder of 30 songs, just to round it out. And the great relationship that I have with Zach is that I really trust him to listen to the material and potentially find things that I might not be able to see, because I’m living with the material so long. So I’d asked him, “[Is there] any moment in those sessions that you think is an egregious omission…?” And “Someone Who Can” was the song he chose. 

To me, that song is so important. As you get older, the change that happens in life around you — you just want to be able to understand it. You get set in your ways, with what feels comfortable, but things are gonna change, and you want to be receptive to that. That’s what that song means to me.

You guys have got a co-headlining tour with Mastodon scheduled for the spring, and one with Taking Back Sunday for the summer. How did those tours come together?

We have toured with both bands in the past, but we’re playing territories that we didn’t with them before. I love the guys in Mastodon, and I love the guys in TBS. My wife actually has a podcast with [Taking Back Sunday singer] Adam Lazzarra’s wife Misha, called Band Wives. My wife was like, “Misha and I were trying to manifest this, so we could have a summer out on the road.” And sure, why not!

But I’m excited. I like touring with bands that I’m comfortable with and we have a relationship with, and it’s cool because Mastodon and Taking Back Sunday, are two extremely different bands. That’s the thing I love about being in this band — it doesn’t feel that out of place to put us in those worlds. I find pride in that.

And in January, you announced a new custom guitar, The Jackhammer.

That was actually kind of random! We’ve been trying to try to do something with Gibson for a while, but I typically have this DIY mentality with a lot of the things, so I was like, “Why is the guitar any different?” So I just started to collage something together on my phone, and I did something that paid tribute to the guitars that I came up with, like the SG and the Explorer E2.

I hit up my guitar tech [Kevin Allen] to see if he could put together some sort of prototype — so he did, and playing through a song with it, it had all the things that I like in a body type. We hit up Dunable Guitars out of California, and they sent me two prototypes to check out, and I used them on the last runs. We’re now manufacturing them — nothing’s out yet for sale. But I was just saying to Kevin today while we were doing rehearsals that I want to use more Jackhammers, because they sound good, and I just feel comfortable with them.

Between the single, the tours, the signature guitar and this new album, it feels from the outside like you guys are firing on all cylinders. Does it feel to you like things are coalescing in a way that’s unique?

Yes. Even from [2018’s] Unheavenly Creatures to now The Father of Make Believe, if I were more mature back 20 years ago, this is how I would have presented Coheed and Cambria back then. But I just didn’t know — at the time, I was just so confused. A lot of what I was doing with the concept was pretty purely out of insecurity. I just had this really hard time being the frontman of the band, and in order for me to be honest, I needed to create something to use as a diversion. That’s where the Amory Wars came from. Now, I’ve become more confident, and it’s easier for me to express the duality of this thing. Yes, this is very much a story of my life — but I’m a wacky motherf–ker, and I don’t necessarily find the biography of my life that interesting, so I’m going to turn it into this magical mystery tour.

But I do feel like there is a sense of rejuvenation. Playing “Searching for Tomorrow” and “Blind Side Sonny” and “Someone Who Can,” and even [A Window of the Waking Mind songs] “Liars Club” or “Shoulders” — those are songs that get almost a better reaction from our audience than the songs that have the 20-year lifespan. So I am really excited about this era of the band. It is cool to listen to the album and go, “This is a band that’s not new, and is still reaching.”