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Claudio Sanchez is a rock star. His group, Coheed and Cambria, has millions of fans around the world. Her cascading mane of heavy metal hair is the envy of other musicians and prides of lions. The secret of Sanchez's success: to be a giant nerd.
Some groups tell stories with their music. Then there is Coheed and Cambria, who used eight of their nine studio albums to assemble a gigantic and interconnected universe of science fiction. The last, Vaxis – Act I: Celestial Creatures, free Friday; like the rest, it is inspired and fed in many ways by comics, movies and even video games.
"This stuff is as good as cinema," said Sanchez Kotaku by phone when asked about the inspirations of video games. "They act as a liberation. When I'm exhausted trying to create something, I want to play in someone else's world, and I think that's what games allow me to do. They allow my prospect to open up and replenish my creative energy. "
The Coheed and Cambria saga, which has expanded beyond albums into books and comics, is centered on an interlocking series of planets called "The Keywork" and characters who hope to prevent (or provoke) its destruction. The band's name comes from two characters who die early enough, but the universe continues without them, and the story focuses on their son, who is also called Claudio.
While most rock bands talk about unrequited love, breaks and cars, Coheed speaks of these things in the context of intergalactic intrigue, messianic superheroes and metadata involving talking bicycles. Years before the general public embraces wholeheartedly things like the cinematic universe of Marvel or The Iron Throne & # 39; labyrinthine narrative, Coheed has turned his seemingly odd epic into gigantic success, built on both casual fans of songs like their 2003 emo banger "A Favor House Atlantic" or the 2005 metal anthem "Welcome Home", as well as about worship could tell you the whole story of each album, if you have a few hours to lose, anyway.
For the most part, Sanchez is the engineer of the universe. He was inspired by the writing of the first story during a trip to Paris at the very beginning of his life. It started on Coheed's first album Second stage turbine blade and a series of comic books called The online bag adventures. Always a bit clumsy and self-conscious, Sanchez said he felt more comfortable in concluding his personal trials and tribulations in a winding mythology. Over the years, he has spoken at length about how comics range from Batman to the weird stuff of Alejandro Jodorowsky and movies ranging from Star wars strange things of Alejandro Jodorowsky influenced his writing. But, he said Kotakuhis bread and butter are not just books, movies and comics. He has also played games all his life and, like everything around him, these influences tend to infiltrate his stories.
"When you look at the Halo from the ground, you change your perspective and you see it coming up. I just remember that moment of being in this game and watching this, and just like, "Wow, what an interesting idea to create something like this."
Sanchez started playing games on an Atari 5200 that he had bought with his brother when they were kids. They just wanted a video game system – no matter what video game system – and so took the first thing at their fingertips. Then a friend of the school received the most sophisticated Nintendo entertainment system, and Sanchez and his brother were instantly filled with regret. "We were like," Man, did we act badly, "he laughs.
These days, Sanchez said that he plays games like Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Wolfenstein, and Star Wars Battlefront II between writing and touring. He quoted Halo as a game that has directly influenced him creatively. Not the fight or the increasingly complicated saga of Master Chief, but its structure. "When you look at the Halo from the ground, when you change perspective and you see it coming up," he said. "I just remember that moment of being in this game and watching this, and just like" Wow, what an interesting idea to create something like this. "
In 2013, Coheed and Cambria collaborated with a studio called Man Vs. Games to create a Amory Wars mobile game called Fall of the key. It was a fighting game in which you could play the characters in Sanchez's universe, which was cool, but it was also a fighting game. On the mobile. You can probably do the math here. This was not well received.
"Oh my god," said Sanchez when I raised the issue. "It was our first approach trying to make a casual game … but when you play an iOS game and you try to do it street fighter moves without a tangible touch controller, it's difficult. "
However, he added that he would like to make a new video game someday. A first person shooter, a third person action game or a role play are all possibilities. His idea to the left, however, is a beat-em-up inspired by Double DragonOne of his favorite games of all time, which would be published on a real 16-bit cartridge. "I would love to do that," he said.
On the next album, Vaxis – Act I: Celestial Creatures, chiptune-style sounds form the exciting synthesizer dance floor under the rugged metal sole of the title track. "Unheavenly Creatures" is a song in which one of the main characters on the album, Creature, recounts the crime that went wrong and landed him and his partner in a giant space prison called The Dark Sentencer .
Sanchez told me that if the games he had been playing grew up did not directly affect the melody of this song, he was influenced by chiptune music and exhibited some of the nostalgic and nostalgic feelings that people associate with soundtracks classic video games.
"I think it sounded alone," he said. "When I heard this sound isolated without the guitars playing those whole chords, I thought to myself," OK, well, the voice is a confessional of someone who tells his story. "This synthesizer alone is a good partner for something. like that, because it looks lonely. I think that's why I liked that.
Sanchez is now a father and plays games with his four-year-old son, Atlas, mainly on the Nintendo Switch. For a while, he would not play games on the road a lot because other Coheed members were not so keen on them and because he did not want to monopolize the television. In this regard, the switch was a boon, he said. He and Atlas worked together to beat Mario Odyssey during a tour, and now they've gone to Traveling Octopathus.
The last leisure of Sanchez in terms of tour is the game on the table. He is caught playing Dungeons & Dragons on the road with his tour manager and his wife. He wanted to play more games. He said that he was briefly immersed in his childhood, but the circumstances were never ideal. "I'm pretty socially awkward," he said. "It's not easy for me to try to be social with strangers at random. When my tour manager suggested he play a game for my wife and me, and maybe with some band members, I jumped on the opportunity.
The other members of the group have never joined the game, but it is a useful exercise for Sanchez and his wife Chondra, also a writer and frequent collaborator with her husband. Sanchez said that he and Chondra are very comfortable as a creative team, but this can lead to formulas and models, which DnD allows them to free themselves by improvisation.
Sanchez likes to experiment with his character, a barbaric mountain dwarf named Thoragast. "One moment, he's totally talking about one side of the mouth like Popeye, and then the next minute he's that western cowboy about to shoot in a saloon," he said. "I'm like," I have to master this character! "My wife loves it." She laughed hysterically at my Thoragast, which sounded sexual, actually.
Sanchez said that he would jump on the opportunity to make a Amory Wars table or pen game. "It's something I'd like to do is create a game like this that will allow fans to connect to each other, even without the band as a bridge," he said. "Most of the time, it's under the aegis of a show. If there was a way to get them to interact outside of that, I think it would be amazing. I think that's one of the things I love about DnD. "
For Sanchez, it was rewarding to see everything from Marvel movies to movies DnD to have a kind of cultural renaissance. Where once he had trouble finding who to appreciate these things, he is now the leader of a group that – among many others – has contributed to writing a song in the soundtrack of Batman: Arkham City. He always feels that Coheed is more of a cult band than a traditional band, but he is happy with what he has created. "I always have the impression that people treat Coheed as an outcast," he said. "But I'm happy to see what kind of things are socially acceptable."
At the time, he could not even make connections with his own group mates over his nerdy leanings. But now it's a different story.
"When you start hearing about the Infinity Gauntlet or Iron Man project, or the interest that Batman and the Joker arouse and the fact that the band was very interested in making this song Arkham Cityit's cool, "said Sanchez. "It's like," All right, now my friends have metamorphosed into those other beings with whom I can now have these other conversations. "
With a new album loaded with stories, Sanchez is eager to present the Amory Wars back to the avant-garde after a brief detour in the 2015 album The color before the sun. Although the story may have extravagant pitfalls, it is deeply personal to Sanchez, who recently said Rolling stone that he was considering leaving the group before creating Celestial Creatures, only to realize that the Coheed saga is "in my blood". For Sanchez, this moment was a calculation. Going around the world and telling this gargantuan story, geek, inspired by comics and games, he becomes a great child forever. Now that he has a family, is that really what's best for them?
"I questioned myself as a father," he said. Kotaku. "I thought," I'm in this rock band claiming never to grow up, because I leave my son in the care of my wife alone in the middle of the country. "
So he did what every good musician does with his problems: he wrote a song about it. It ended up becoming "The Pavilion", an exceptional title on Celestial Creatures. "I think it was necessary to write this song to really express those emotions and feelings," he said. "Of course, I came back and reversed the design to incorporate it into the concept, but now I think I'm far from those feelings and I created Celestial Creaturesmy son inspired him in a way that I did not think I could imagine. "
Growing up, he says, his own father worked all day long and came home exhausted. On the other hand, Sanchez spends time with his family all day when he's not touring, and he writes songs and stories inspired by what he loves and his favorite characters.
"I realize, with a fresh head and a new perspective, that I have it very well."
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