The war is over.
Coheed and Cambria have managed to earn themselves a huge amount of attention in the past year or so, so the venue is packed when they finally take to the stage, but even though the crowd is wedged in tightly, the reaction for Coheed is strangely muted and after their first few tracks the floor empties slightly. It’s almost as if a lot of people only came to see what all the fuss and hype was about then wandered off; at least it leaves a bit more room for the fans to move around in.
It’s interesting to see Coheed play in the Great Hall; it’s the biggest venue they’ve played in so far in Cardiff and true to form they fill every corner with their epic proggy sound. Even with the line up changes they’ve suffered recently and the bizarre addition of what appear to be two female backing vocalists who don’t really seem to add much to proceedings at all and become quite distracting at times, they pull off a huge sounding set.
Most of tonight’s set list comes, as you would expect, from their new album “No World For Tomorrow”; they play all the singles and the more upbeat tracks like ‘The Running Free’, ‘Radio Bye Bye’ and title track ‘No World For Tomorrow’. It’s obviously meant to be a crowd pleasing set and does the trick, with everyone bouncing up and down and howling out the choruses along with Claudio.
Luckily it’s not all new stuff and they throw in a few old ones for the hard core fans;‘Everything Evil’ from first album “The Second Stage Turbine Blade” sounds as radiant and fresh as it did when they were playing support slots for Thursday back in 2003, only a few of us seem to know it well enough to sing along though and ‘In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth:3’ from their second album (of the same name) is as ever an epic and powerful masterpiece of quirky time signatures and anthemic sing along sections.
All in all, this is a commanding performance, (although it could have done with being quite a bit longer)and proof that Coheed, without doubt, deserve the headline slot; every melodic, anthemic and sweeping tune is played to perfection and should have had every sweaty body in the venue moving and screaming along, hopefully those that weren’t have been converted by this show of strength.