Coheed and Cambria – ‘Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV...’ (Sony) Released 26/09/05

First, a warning: this album is certainly not for the faint hearted. Weighing in at a whopping eighty minutes (that’s both Franz Ferdinand albums put together! And then some!), perhaps the most ominous thing about this record is the ‘Volume One’ in the title. Crikey! There’s even more of this? Yep, it seems that concept albums are officially for lightweights: this is Coheed and Cambria’s third album instalment (and if that ‘Volume One’ is anything to go by, presumably not the last) in their series of epic, sci-fi romps which present the gospel according to C&C.

‘Good Apollo…’ continues a storyline that was central to C&C’s first two albums (‘Second Stage Turbine Blade’ and ‘In Keeping with Silent Earth: 3’ - seriously, you couldn’t make these up). It’s an immensely long and convoluted narrative that’s half pseudo-Biblical symbolism, half intergalactic silliness, which manages to include along the way an android who goes by the fabulous name of Mayo Deftinwolf. This album desperately wants to be a musical Paradise Lost meets Star Wars (which is pretty dodgy as aspirations go) but it ends up being more like an unintentionally hilarious version of Spinal Tap’s ‘Stonehenge’, performed by attendees of a Star Trek convention. In short, it’s the album comic book guy from The Simpsons would make. Only deadly serious.

Given the uber-weirdness of its concept, ‘Good Apollo…’ should be an amazing-in-an-ironic-way fandango of prog-rock, that sounds like it was beamed in from space by the Martian equivalent of Rick Wakeman. Sadly it’s not. Occasional proggy beeps and squelches aside, the album is a pretty drab affair of clinically executed, over-produced rawk. It would be wonderful if C&C were parodying a rubbish Tap-type band rather than being one but unfortunately for them, the first instinct of most listeners will be to laugh with the band when they think it’s all a joke, and at them when they realize it’s not.