Jobie Reviews Music 72: Vaxis - Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures (album) by Coheed and Cambria

Vaxis - Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures is a 2018 progressive rock album by the band Coheed and Cambria. The album encompasses 15 tracks, totaling 1 hour and 19 minutes of music. The album, as with all of Coheed and Cambria’s albums (with the exception of The Color Before the Sun), continues the ongoing story of The Amory Wars, a series of fiction novels and comics started by frontman Claudio Sanchez.

The album begins with something that’s never been seen before on any other Coheed and Cambria albums - an introductory track which introduces the plot of the album. While it doesn’t go into explicit detail, it goes over the bare minimum of important plot details from the novella and comics sharing the album’s name. It opens with a melody that recurs throughout the albums multiple times, which might be another version of the famous recurring melody found in other Coheed and Cambria albums that represents the passage of time.

After the first track (which was appropriately titled “Prologue”), the album smoothly transitions into “The Dark Sentencer”, the first proper track of the album. It showcases what the album continues to excel at 14 tracks after it; good lyrics, good instrumentation, and good vocals all around. A great track to set the tone for the rest of the album.

Of course, like with most of the band’s work, the album feels very “soundtrack-like”; that is, the tracks have multiple almost orchestral-like moments where it feels like they could’ve been ripped straight off a soundtrack for an epic movie. This element makes the tracks feel individually special, giving them distinction from each other and making you feel satisfied while listening to each of them.

Other Coheed and Cambria tracks have been filled with emotionally charged vocals, but it’s especially noticeable on this album. There are multiple tracks, such as “The Unheavenly Creatures”, which feature vocals from Claudio Sanchez that highlight the tone that the track is going for. Having emotionally-packed vocals are a minor, but also major, contribution to the overall “feel” of the album. They certainly make the album more interesting to listen to, enhancing each track that has them (in other words, most of the tracks on the album).

Coheed and Cambria also use various unique choices of instrumentation in order to make certain tracks unique, such as the track “Toys”, which opens with an interesting, nearly ambient sounding melody before transitioning back into the band’s familiar progressive rock sound. That entire track in general has a very interesting composition, with interesting melodies and intricacies which set it apart from the other tracks.

Being that this point in The Amory Wars’ story revolves around the two lover characters “Creature” and “Sister Spider” characters, it’s no surprise that some of the lyrics revolve around love. Such is the case with tracks like “Black Sunday”, which see the singer promising an unspecified person that they’ll be loyal to their lover.

Another thing that’s interesting about this album is that it occasionally makes use of electrical-sounding keyboards, which is especially apparent in the instrumentation of the track “Night-Time Walkers”. All of this is part of the sound which makes the band’s progressive rock melodies unique from one another, and contribute to the album’s overall uniqueness.

The album closes with the track “Lucky Stars”, which ends the album on a positive note. It hints at the fact the main issues present at the start of the album have been resolved, leaving us with an uplifting song to close out the hour-long-progressive-rock-melody-filled album.

Some of my favorite tracks from this album include “Queen of the Dark”, “True Ugly”, “All On Fire”, and “The Dark Sentencer”. “True Ugly” in particular has a bit starting around 2 minutes in that makes it really good.

Overall, Coheed and Cambria’s Vaxis - Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures continues the trend of good music that Coheed and Cambria have put out for the last two decades. It sees the return of the awesome instrumentation and overall composition which made the band’s previous albums special. The band says that they plan to release 4 more albums under the Vaxis name, and I hope to review them one day. This album is definitely worth a listen for those looking for satisfying prog rock melodies and instrumentation. The only real flaw with the album is that sometimes its lyrics are repeated a few times too many, but this fact only slightly affects the score. The lyrics are of quality even with the repetition in mind. I recommended this one to fans of the band and casual listeners alike.

Overall rating:

9.3/10

LINK TO ALBUM:

https://open.spotify.com/album/42S0lDJT9wHKCVaMGgqKdm?si=1ftMhrMeSdmXkjGqbD1SPw