Coheed & Cambria @ 9:30 Club 2/4/2013

Last night I met up with Timmy and Oksana and hit up Coheed & Cambria's first stop on their 2013 tour, on the first of two sold out nights in DC! The openers were Russian Circles and Between the Buried and Me. I didn't care about either of those, so we rolled up closer to Coheed's start time. So I can't say anything about their sets except I know I'd just have bad things to say about BTBAM if they were like how I last saw them

Well, it was a sold out show AND the first night of the 2013 tour, it was hella packed. We made our way up to the balcony were we could kinda see from there. The Coheed set had a hue keywork (hourglass thingie) and white female mannequins on either side of the drum riser. And when the show started, there were a ton of fancy lights AND the keywork lit up/changed colours depending on the song. AND there were projections to the wall next to the keywork, with relevant screens to the song at hand.

Checked out their merch table- they had the Afterman CDs ($15), sets of single comics (Armoury Wars, Killaudio), iPhone cover, shirts (no great designs), hoodie i think, belt buckle. I didn't think they had any great shirts. I don't recall how much shirts were..probably $30.

They started off with a couple songs from the new album (dropped that day, I grabbed mine at the show - $15, signed).  I streamed the album from Rolling Stone (who IMO are unreliable when it comes to music). The crowd was very energetic and sang along to the older songs, and a few of the newer ones. Some crowd surfing, hands waving, and kinda a little jumping or other movement. I am pretty sure I was one of the few people headbanging. Different crowd! They seemed like they enjoyed the show, just in different ways!

Claudio changed guitars on like every song, the keywork had a different pattern, many songs had the video behind with some animation... now that was a show! The new bass player sounded good and was not robbing anyone. They utilized a lot of the robot voice intros from the Afterman albums, which IMO worked well as segues between the songs. The roadies had some problems with the grandpa's guitars for the encore, I dunnno what the hold up was. For the first show on the tour, that was probably the biggest glitch I noticed.

Sonically, they sounded great. A few times Claudio let the crowd sing chorus vocals and concentrated on his guitar playing. They played a lot of new songs, which was pretty good as their new albums are pretty solid. Of course part of me wants to hear the old stuff too!  Since they were playing songs from the new album and I had only heard the stream once, I was kinda displeased about not being more familiar. However, it was expected as with all tours where the album drops on or after the tour date.

I loved that they played 'A Favor House Atlantic,' as they didn't last time!  One of my favourites.  I could have done without the acoustic version of 'Iron Fist,' and nestled together with 'The Dark Side of Me' as it kinda killed the momentum a little. I did think that their new stuff in particular sounded the best (probably cause they just recorded it and are trying to promote it!). The inclusion of their way heavier live 'No World For Tomorrow' was killer (despite being the only one in my area of the balcony banging my head). 'The Crowing' was also particularly haunting and excellent.


Photos:
(Coming soon)
Coheed I
Coheed II
Coheed III

Setlist: (9:51- 11:36)

• Pretelethal
• Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry the Defiant
• A Favor House Atlantic
• The Afterman
• No World for Tomorrow
• The Crowing
• Key Entity Extraction III: Vic the Butcher
• Key Entity Extraction IV: Evagria the Faithful
• Iron Fist
• Here We Are Juggernaut
• Dark Side of Me
• In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
  Encore:
• Wake Up
• The Hollow
• Key Entity Extraction I: Domino the Destitute
• Welcome Home