Jobie Reviews Music 41: The Afterman: Ascension (album) by Coheed and Cambria
- ChemicalSkylines
- Mar 12, 2021
- 2 min read
The Afterman: Ascension is a 2012 progressive metal album by the band Coheed and Cambria. It contains 9 tracks, spanning 39 minutes of music. The album’s subject matter is related to Coheed and Cambria’s massive narrative that encompasses most (the exception being The Color Before the Sun) of their released albums. I do recommend researching the relevant Wikipedia articles and/or Genius lyrics to get a full breakdown of the meaning of the lyrics in relevance to the comics that were released alongside it, as an actual copy of these is apparently hard to obtain.
In short, though, the basic plot of this album revolves around Sirius Amory, a scientific researcher, entering the Keywork (please do further research on this, the full backstory to these albums is very lengthy), a beam of light that connects the planets and stars of the Amory Wars universe Coheed and Cambria have established over 6 albums. Souls are collected from the neighboring Heaven’s Gate in order to maintain The Keywork. These souls are known to attack anyone who enters the area, with the key exception being Evagria the Faithful and one other entity.
This is what happens to Sirius, who meets and is attacked by various souls throughout the album, in the tracks which are under the name “Key Entity Extraction”.
Aside from the interesting story, the album manages to be great musically as well. The guitar melodies, along with the various other musical elements which contribute to the album’s sound, all make for a great sound that tells the album’s story with epic backdrops.
Even if you don’t pay attention to the story, the tremendously good guitar sound (and a little bit of bass!) absolutely has to be appreciated. You’d be a fool to say that the guitar on this album does nothing - or even worse, subtracts from it - because that is entirely untrue. It’s what makes this album stand alone from other Coheed and Cambria albums, especially from track to track.
Overall, if you’re looking for a metal experience that will grace your ears with interesting and pleasurable guitar tunes, then The Afterman: Ascension is the album for you.
Overall rating:
9/10
LINK TO ALBUM:
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