“The Afterman: Ascension,” the sixth studio album from prog-rock staples Coheed and Cambria, hits stores on Tuesday (Oct. 9) and acts as the first half of a two-part epic (“The Afterman: Descension” will be released in February). Before the album release, frontman Claudio Sanchez sat down with Billboard to discuss the inspiration behind the band’s latest rock opus.
“A lot of the songs are just really a recount of the things that I had gone through in the past two years,” the 35-year-old singer tells Billboard. After Coheed came off the road in support of its 2010 album “Year of the Black Rainbow,” Sanchez started writing about things that were “inspiring to me at that moment in time.” It wasn’t until he penned “The Afterman,” which is the third song on the band’s new album, that a story started to come together.
“My wife and I spent a day on a boat, and our cell reception was pretty poor,” Sanchez says about “The Afterman” in his track-by-track breakdown of Coheed and Cambria’s new album. “And when we got home, she had discovered on Facebook that a good friend of hers… had passed away. And I had never witnessed anything like that before — this impersonal way to discover that you had lost somebody. And that moment kind of inspired me.”
Meanwhile, first single “Domino the Destitute” is described as an anthem that captures the departure of bassist Mic Todd from the band. “It’s sort of a play on the rise of this champion, only to find that that rise is really actually his demise, and all the things that come with that attention,” Sanchez shares.
Want to learn more about Coheed and Cambria’s latest full-length? Watch Claudio Sanchez’s full track-by-track video, and leave your own thoughts on “The Afterman: Ascension” in the comments section below.