in keeping secrets of silent earth: 3

or, an epic

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This was my introduction to Coheed and Cambria back in 2005 or 2004 or whenever this happened. My first reaction upon seeing this was, What the fuck is this? My second reaction was, This is hilarious. My third reaction, which came weeks later after seeing the music video a number of times was, Do I love this?

Well, after fifteen years or however time still works, I can say this: I do love it.

I love it so much that it’s honestly a little embarrassing. If I could pick only one thing to listen to for the rest of my life, it would not be this. But if I had to pick 100 songs to listen to forever, it’s possible, on certain days, this song would make the list.

I think the obvious thing that caused this to wriggle down my Eustachian tubes and latch onto my brainstem is Claudio Sanchez’ voice.

Honestly, the first time I heard this song and saw the video, I thought it was a parody of something I’d never previously heard. Or maybe just a parody of an entire decade. I mean, the video kind of is, but the song is so earnestly serious and tenderly touching that the openthroated longing is hard to ignore.

But Claudio’s voice—

I love unusual voices. Eventually, this would lead me to Tom Waits and Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart and Kazuki Tomokawa, but Claudio’s voice is unusual in a way that’s difficult for me to really pin down. Yes, the fact that he’s a big man with a very high voice is certainly part of it, but there’s a sort of whine that, I think, would not appeal to me if someone described it to me. But I find that bit of emotional coloring on his voice here weirdly irresistible.

And on top of all that and despite the fact that Coheed and Cambria is best known for writing labyrinthine science fantasy epics, this song is just a crystalline perfect pop song.

I knew nothing about Coheed and Cambria’s reputation, so imagine my surprise when I encountered this:

If this doesn’t send tingles down your spine, I don’t even know what to tell you. I love this. I love this madly. Wildly.

The first time I heard it, headphones on, liner notes in hand, I felt as if I was sailing far away in the way that reading of Numenor in The Silmarillion brought me to distant shores.

I held my breath and just listened, a feeling swelling in my chest, behind my eyes, and in this place at the edge of my jaw that I once tried to explain to all of you that I can only now describe as transcendence.

I grew up on Metallica’s And Justice for All and Master of Puppets. Along with that, I grew up on Nobuo Uemetsu and classical music not specifically designed for videogames. I have always been in love with long winding songs that slide across movements, across registers, that make my heart ache and ready to cave in on itself, but something about the journey this specific song took me on is difficult to capture.

The way the song in the above video erupts at the 6:40 mark, the way Claudio screams for me to man my own jackhammer hits me galvanically. It rushes through my skin and sets all my hair standing, like bathing in electricity.

But in a good way.

I even went to see them in concert for The Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV tour, even though I went there specifically to see the opener, who I will write about some day when I feel more comfortable with hurting myself through my own recollections. But seeing them live, feeling the loudness rip through my spine, my lungs splintering to dust that I exhaled reluctantly while I thrashed along in the pit with sweaty bodied freaks while Claudio falsettoed us all to new heights, to new worlds, to grand edifices of sound and lyrics that he named home and that he welcomed us to, where we found our many bodies converging into one mass, into one massive throat screaming his words back in his face loud enough to drown out his microphone and all those linebacker sized speakers.

And so it was that when I just couldn’t take listening to the Encanto soundtrack one more time and after exhausting all the best White Stripes videos and performances, I showed my son Coheed and Cambria.

And though I’ve always loved In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, I have never loved the whole album. In fact, I actually don’t like that many Coheed and Cambria songs, despite my deep affection for them.

But I could happily spend days inside Claudio’s labyrinth set far away, in a distant kind of universe.

But I’ll leave you with a performance from Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, which blew my son’s mind. And so now I’ve been listening to just this song with him for months and part of me longs for Encanto once more.

Such is the life of a parent.