Coheed And Cambria – Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe
Release Date: 14th March 2025
Label: Virgin Music
With a conceptual legacy expansive enough to give George RR Martin a run for his money, Coheed and Cambria continue to break the mold with their new album Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe. This genre-blending release soundtracks the latest addition to the firmly established Amory Wars saga (of which the album’s counterpart, an ongoing series of science fiction comic books and novels, is co-written by frontman and lead creative Claudio Sanchez).
From upbeat, hook-filled alt pop floor fillers; to sprawling, expansive prog anthologies, Vaxis –Act III brings plenty to the table for listeners new and old to sink their teeth into.
Loaded with creative charm, and forefronted with eclipsing guitar wizardry and relentlessly anthemic choruses, this record enthusiastically encourages listeners to join Coheed’s personable ceremony of sonic maximalism. In title track “The Father of Make Believe”, Sanchez’s signature twinned vocal harmonies float alongside thick power chords and swaggering half-time percussion, as he explores concepts of blurred lines between wrong and right.
“Goodbye, Sunshine” exudes bittersweet optimism as a richly overdriven ballad, while punk fuelled “Blind Side Sonny” could comfortably sit alongside a My Chemical Romance – Danger Days era set list with its gang vocal style choruses. The most recent single “Someone Who Can” stands out as a glossy, eighties-charged palate cleanser that almost comes out of left field amongst its prior counterparts, oozing in chorus effects, and enveloped in an air of upbeat hopefulness.
Closing the album is a four-part zenith entitled “The Continuum”, brimming with technical guitar licks and skyscraping passages that allow Coheed to fully lean into their progressive influences and expansive storytelling, before resolving into a whimsical, multi-instrumental epilogue. Sanchez’s seemingly endless imagination is only rivalled by his accessibility. As the tenth instalment in an ongoing chronology, Vaxis – Act III has every right to intimidate new listeners, and yet this chapter is as contemporary and high-spirited as their commercial breakthrough Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV released twenty years prior.
Rating: 8/10
FFO: Avenged Sevenfold / Jimmy Eat World / Rush
Recommended Track: Goodbye Sunshine