Episode 001: One & The Broken

The epic introduction to the entire Amory Wars Saga! Join us as we embark on our journey to break down every song - starting at the beginning of the story with "One" & "The Broken" from "Year of the Black Rainbow"

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We must pray for the broken to order pizzas.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You get those from my genius list.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Hey everyone, Joel here, just cutting into the top of the podcast here to let everyone know that we recorded this about a week ago before the San Diego Comic Con. And if any of you followed the Koheed socials, you probably saw that at San Diego Comic Con they were selling the Year of the Black Rainbow new novel at the Evil Inc. booth, which makes me think that any of us who pre-ordered it should be getting our orders relatively soon. And it also means it's probably available for purchase in general at outside of San Diego Comic Con. So go ahead and grab a copy of that novel if you don't have one already, and then you can follow along with us as we go through every track. And uh yeah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Oh, that's my cue. Hello, I'm Zach.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, so as I said, we are brothers and we are both huge fans of the band Koheed and Cambria. And the concept of this podcast is we're gonna go over every single Koheed and Cambria song from their discography, but we're doing it in lore order, and we're gonna break down the lore, the stories in the songs. We're gonna break down the music in the making of the songs. We're both musicians. Uh, we've been playing music for our entire lives, and it should be a fun little exercise. Uh, I am a drummer.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

I'm gonna I'm gonna stop you right there. Okay, well, you spoiled it. I was gonna say I'm a musician and you're a drummer. I just wanted to clarify that.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Oh, rude.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Anyway, if you like this dynamic, folks, this is what you have to look forward to. It's just a lot of us shitting on each other, but praising Koheed and Cambria because we love them.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah. So to give a little background on us also, uh, I am the older brother. We're about ten years apart, and Zach, I believe, had a lot of his music interests shaped through me, and I did him a solid by introducing him to Coheat and Cambria when he was a very young child, and he has been thanking me for it every day since.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yep, that's right. I was ten years old, and I first I listened to In Keeping Secrets, and I was like, wow, this is really different. I've never heard anything like this before. And then I want to say for like my birthday that year, you got me the original Bag Online second stage turbine blade issue. Issue number one.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Wow, what happened to that?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I unfortunately don't still have it. I think it was destroyed by my own negligence. But then shortly after episode issue two came out, I got or issue one came out, I got issue two, and that had both the infamous Joseph Josephine sexual assault scene and also uh Koheed bashing his daughter's head in with a hammer, all in one issue, and that was just a real great exposure to the world of what would become the Amory Wars for me, a butting ten-year-old child. So thank you, brother, for shaping me and forming my psyche.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Perfect for a young child. That's what I've always said. Introduce your kids to Kohheed early and often.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

You know what's funny is now I have friends, at least friends online, that have kids that they introduce to Koheed, and like one of them I have a friend, they have uh three kids, and the oldest one is like ten, and he walks out to shoulders for his like softball games at his school.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Hell yeah. Well, I mean, really, if you think about it, Koheed, even with that sort of as an introduction back in the day, their first albums have some some violent stuff going on, but in general, as a band, especially nowadays, they're pretty wholesome group of guys. They're all, you know, not drug dudes. There, there's no minus Mike Todd incident, there's no weirdness really going on in the band, uh, at least now anyway. They got through all that. They're old now, and I I think they're, I would say, model citizens, and they should be looked upon for most musicians who want to have a long career.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

They're just nice boys. I mean, no, at this point in their rear career, no allegations, no really prominent instances of like really rude or shitty behavior. Just the sweetest guys on planet Earth.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Right. So we decided to do this in lower order, and there was a debate between the two of us about what that exactly meant. And I wanted to start with the Afterman records. The reason was because I think those are my favorite records in general, and I believe it's well known that it's sort of the prequel to the whole Emery Wars saga. Zach wanted to start with second stage Turbine Blade, which is obviously the first released album, started the whole, you know, Kohheed Revolution, and it was the first album that had any sort of actual story put to it. Uh, but we landed on Year the Black Rainbow. It was sort of a compromise.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, and You're the Black Rainbow is the true chapter one to the story. I mean, it's it's sort of the phantom menace, I guess, to the Coheed and Cambria mythos. The Afterman is chronologically a prequel, but it's more like a prequel spin-off in my mind, which is why I was so against starting with it. It's a great record, the story is fantastic, and we will get to it eventually, but I just felt that the characters and the story of that record weren't really going to become relevant for the rest of the saga for a long time until we start diving into the Vaxxis pentology, which uh we might get to in five years from now. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah, so that brings me to sort of the cadence of the podcast. Uh we're dropping two episodes the first day, which is supposed to be Tuesday, the 28th of July, which, by the way, if you happen to be listening to this on Tuesday, the 28th of July, or Wednesday, the 29th of July, you will find both my brother and I in Texas at the Fort Worth show and then the San Antonio show. So if you see that you're going to be there, message us on Instagram or whatever, and we'll come say hi. I don't know that you know us by our voices, so you'll have to we'll have to figure out a meetup somehow. But yeah, we'll we're we're gonna be in Texas.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

If you find us on the socials, which maybe plug the the Koheed Chronicles social page, then they can find our pages through there, probably.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, we're we're simple. We're on Instagram and it's just at the Koh Heed Chronicles. Easy.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

I also want to clarify that we're not Texans. We are just we'll be in Texas for those two days.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Not that there's anything wrong with Texans. Uh no. But yeah, we'll we'll be in Texas. That's one thing I think a lot of the Koheed community does is sort of these quote heed trips where people go and travel to watch the band. I know not everyone can do that, not everyone has the means to do that, and we are lucky in that sense that we have been able to see them in a lot of different places, and it's become a passion of ours. We're both childless adults with dual-income families. So uh that helps a lot.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Absolutely. You know what they say, don't have kids, you don't have to smash one's head with a hammer.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Oh, oh, that's that's what they all say, except for Koheed.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, it didn't work out in his case.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Okay, so now we're not gonna do this for every episode because spoiler alert, we're actually recording this in advance, and we plan on probably being a little bit ahead of it in terms of when the episodes get released. We'll have actually recorded it a week or two before that, so we're not gonna be like a current news podcast per se. And we actually are recording this about a week before the drop date, but I had a couple of quote unquote this week in Koheat Histories, and then Zach had a little bit of news he saw that he wanted to share. First, just a couple of single releases that happened right around this time. First, uh July 21st, which when you hear this will have been a week ago, was actually the day the shoulders, aforementioned shoulders, was released as a single back in 2021. And then on July 27th, the Covent Marth remix of Here We Are Juggernaut. Covent Marth, who I will be speaking about with Zach later on in this episode because he has a lot involved in this episode. He had a remix. And uh actually, Zach, was that a was that an Atticus remix? Who who did that?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah, I believe it was an atticus Ross remix. Um Mage Covent Marth, although he predominantly ruled over sector 11, I want to say, maybe eight. I gotta look at it again. Uh, he had a side job as a DJ that no one knew about.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yeah, and he made this you know killer remix of Here We Are Juggernaut.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

But I will I will go on record as saying I love Koheed, and this is gonna be a very positive podcast. That's my least favorite remix they've ever released.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

I will do you one better, sir, and I have never even listened to it.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Don't mess with Koheed fans. We don't even listen to the music.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

I I've I've listened extensively to almost everything else, but uh just in general, remixes, you know, are not my thing. But anyway, I know uh Zach had a little bit of news he read that he wanted to share, which if you're involved in the Koheed universe, you probably heard about this too, but I thought it was interesting.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Yeah, this popped up on Reddit a few days ago, uh, but that uh contemporary singer Teddy Swims apparently decided to become a musician because of Koheed, specifically Claudio. There's an article here from KS95. This must be a local radio station of someone that interviewed Teddy, but one of the first concerts I ever went to is Warp Tour in 2007. I was like 15 at the time. That was at the time I discovered this is what I want to be for a living, this is where I really decided. But there was one moment in particular that made him decide when he watched the prog metal band Cohed and Cambria perform, and their lead singer Claudio Sanchez did a stage dive into the crowd. I remember getting to touch his hair and being like, Oh my gosh, I gotta be this guy. So Teddy Swims, huge Cohen Cambria fan, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

How often does Claudio do a stage dive?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

I have not seen him do a stage dive. Well, I mean, I've seen him come down into the crowd, but I don't know if that's quite what stage diving is. I uh for me, it's like stage dive, does he set down his guitar? Probably not. I think this is just an instance where maybe he came down to the crowd and and you know interjected himself into it. That's that seems more realistic to me. I've never seen him stage by, but hey, if anyone has a video of Claudio stage diving, please DM it to us because I would love to see it.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah, that sounds crazy to me. He did, you know, not in 2007, I don't think, but he he did drop the guitar a little bit for Unheavenly Creatures and some of some of that stuff. He played the synth on uh what's that song from Vaxxis One?

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Uh The Unheavenly Creatures. No, not a different song. Um, uh he played the synth on Oh my god, it's on Vaxxis 2. Uh Dancing in the Sun not Dancing in the Dark. Uh this is gonna drive me crazy. I really love this song, too. Yeah, we love it.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Anyway, Koheed fans, you know what song it is. Message us and tell us that we're wrong.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah. Well, anyway, that is our Koheed week in history and new segment for the day, the the episode. And like I said, we're not going to do that every episode. When it makes sense, we will. Uh, one thing that also is relatively new news, which will lead us into what we're doing here, is the Year of the Black Rainbow novel has officially become available for purchase again. You could always get it on Kindle, which I actually have a Kindle version that I've been using for studying this text now. And I have the regular version from the box set, but I I never opened that one. I just I just look at it on my shelf. But uh now they have a new version coming out with new artwork, and I don't know if there's any new content or any new things like that in there, Zach. Is there anything like that going on?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Not from what I can see in the description. They had said something like updated version, but I don't know if it actually updates anything besides the artwork on it. But we'll find out. Uh we're just weeks away at this point from it be from it shipping out.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, maybe there's some new foreword or something by Claudio or even the late Peter David. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

I would eat that up.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah. So another dynamic between the two of us is Zach is an avid reader and he is very much, for lack of better term, obsessed with the Amory Wars lore. He's been a fan of it. I mean, when you're a kid, when you're 10 years old and you find out there's this band that has all these albums and they all follow this overarching storyline, that's that's got to be fascinating to someone who's already literary in general. And to me, I didn't have when I got into those early Koheed records, I didn't have any of the lore. It was all just cobalt and calcium and people like speculating about what was going on. And so I I mean you had some basic ideas, especially after the second stage comic came out, like you sort of knew a little bit about certain things, but I have not totally followed along with the lore, so I'm looking at this as a Koheed fan of the music, and I'm learning as we go. So this is going to be kind of a read-along podcast, and I'm looking at Zach as kind of the lore expert in our little dynamic here. And I think I don't know that he would consider himself an expert, but that's what I consider him.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Well, I've read all of the books and comics multiple times at this point now, and you're right. I just happened again at the right time where I was like hooked for life. I caught everything as it came out after that first second stage Turbine Blade comic. There were only two issues of that comic, by the way. I'm sure many Koheed fans know that, but to anybody who doesn't, Claudius started releasing this comic. It didn't work out budget-wise, timeline-wise for him to finish it, so he rebooted it several years later into what we now know as the Amory Wars, and he did now every album in the Koheed mythos has a story companion released to it in some form, whether it's a comic book, a graphic novel, or in this case a prose novel. Although we do know that there will be a comic adaptation of this album coming out in the near future, I believe. That's also being penned by Kevin J. Anderson of Star Wars the Jedi Academy trilogy, for anyone who likes vintage Star Wars books.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

Legend.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

He is writing the novelizations of the other albums as well that already have comics. So eventually, Claudio Sanchez's plan is to have every album have both a comic and a novel adaptation so you can enjoy the story in whatever medium best suits you. But right now, there is a novel for You're the Black Rainbow, and then comic series for Second Stage Tremont Blade, Keeping Secrets, Good Apollo 1 and 2. And then there are sort of prose storybooks or coffee table books, I guess. They're novellas, I guess, of the Vaxxis novels, but they have really beautiful, detailed artwork, and it's arranged in sort of a hardcover coffee table format. So those are fun too. Uh, and they do sell those a la carte, although not upon release. So we're we're sitting in a really interesting position right now. We're 20 years into the Koheed and Cambria legacy. We now have a legitimate real adaptation of the story for every record that's available for consumption. So we're looking at this now with the advantage of I know everything. I've read the whole thing, but for years I was like you reading Cobalt and Calcium forums, and we were all speculating. Those were some really interesting times. So it is different looking at the story now that everything is is out there and available compared to what what it used to be when we only had bits and pieces of the story.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, like what what a time to be alive. What a time to be a CoEden Cambria fan. And I think it's uh really kind of the perfect time for this podcast. And I I was thinking about doing this podcast before all of the material had been released, but it just kind of came to fruition now. And yeah, we we could do this, they could stop recording music tomorrow, and we have everything, at least somewhat of a story for everything that's been released, which is kind of neat.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

The world may be going to shit, the economy may be be in the gutter, but we will have a Coheating Cambria podcast for every song now.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah, for the next 72 years.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

78 years for 78 planets.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Oh, excuse me, my bad. Okay, so that's that's the end of the dynamic between the two of us. Let's get into these songs now. Before we do that, though, let's talk about the record really quick. This is the beginning of a record. This is the record year of the Black Rainbow, which was released on April 13th, 2010. It was produced by legendary now producer Atticus Ross and also Joe Baresi, and it marked the only and first actual performance by Chris Penny, who was playing drums, and the sound had shifted a little bit. The production shifted heavily to a sort of more industrial style, and to say that it was a little controversial at the time is maybe putting it light. I I know that some fans have feelings about this record, but I think I can say Koheat fans have feelings about their music. Yes, big big feelings, in their feelings, like Drake would say. But Zach and I think feelings. Zach and I, I think both agree that we we love this record. And one of the interesting things about Zach and I also, and maybe about a lot of Koheat fans, is to me, Koheat's just in general, like a no-skips band. And I have I have zero ill feelings towards this record, and I actually really love a lot of the songs on this record.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Absolutely. I mean, I love all their records, but uh You're the Black Rainbow, it holds a special place in my heart because I was young when it came out still. I think I was about 16, and I remember just eagerly awaiting for the box set to arrive at my boarding school. I lived at school. That's fun, fun fact about me. And I would like check my front office every day to see if it came in that midweek of April. And when it finally did, I was just so excited. I gobbled up the book. Uh I read all 350 some odd pages within I think one one night or like one to two nights. And it's funny that you called me a reader earlier because I do like to read, but I mostly read, you know, like pulpy sci-fi and like horror stuff. I'm not reading great literature most of the time. Although I did just read the Odyssey, and gotta say, Homer, he uh he knew he he had some good stuff in that one. We should make a movie of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, it's it's pretty epic, huh?

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah, someone tell Michael Bay.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Imagine that. The Michael Bay version of the Odyssey. What would that look like?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Starring Mark Wahlberg, of course.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

And The Rock.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Oh, okay, back on topic here. What were we talking about?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Introducing the record. So that's sort of where they were. The band was sort of in a state of transition. No World for Tomorrow was an album that almost broke them during the recording process because they had to do some member changes. This record, there was a period between those records where Mike Todd, I think, was out of the band, but they brought him back on bass. This is his final performance with the band. And as I said, Chris Penny's only actual performance on a Coeiden Cambria record. Just a kind of a wild time to be a band for them, or be to be to be their band. Claudio got married, I believe, during this record process. And yeah, just a lot of life-changing stuff. And this record, I think, reflects a lot of those sorts of messaging, in addition to the lore behind that record.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Absolutely. It's a very transitional record for Koheed going from that kind of original era of the Amory Wars saga branching into new territory. But I love it for that reason. You talked about Mike Todd earlier, and I'm sure we'll talk about his his parts here soon. But we are big fans of Zach Cooper. We love Zach. We think he's amazing. Super duper Cooper. And especially the latest record, Vaxxus 3, we were talking about how sometimes like the song will just be like in full swing, and then out of nowhere, it's like BAM! Like Zach Cooper flies in with like this incredible bass line.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

And I really love his his bass playing, especially on the newer Koheed stuff. But this record, I find myself, every time I hear Mike Todd's bass, I'm like, man, like he is so in the pocket, he's so funky, but he's so like just locked in. I love listening to him play, and it is such a unique dynamic for this particular group of musicians to play together. I recently just acquired the vinyl record of this record, which is record of this record, the vinyl record of this album, which is really difficult to find, and I got a signed copy by the members who recorded it too. Oh, and fun fact, I just mentioned I went to boarding school, but they were Recorded this record in Pasadena, California, at a studio right down the street from my boarding school. And I learned that after going into a comic shop that was right across the street from it, and and finding Kill Audio, Claude, one of Claudio's side project comics at the time. And it was signed by Claudio. And I was I asked the comic book shop. I was like, wow, this is incredible. He signed this. He's like, Oh, yeah, they were recording right across the street. So this was like late 2009, early 2010, Pasadena, California. I was so close to them and I just missed it.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Oh man. So one more. Yeah, right. You're the kid who spammed their page. Look at that. Back in the archives for that one, ladies and gentlemen. Anyway, one more thing, one more quick quote. It's not really a full quote, but if you remember, there's a documentary in the box set of the making of this record, and Claudio said something I thought was interesting at the time. That he thought that album would be the perfect album to represent who they were.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

I mean, it literally ends with Claudio singing, it's over, it's over, it's all coming apart. So if that's any indication of how he felt at the and he wrote that in the studio, too.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah, that was the last one written. We'll we'll get to that. But anyway, interesting take from Claudio, and thankfully that was not the end of the band, even though I think they're even if you watch that documentary, after he says that quote, like there's a shot of him like leaving the studio by himself, the the door shuts, and he's like walking down the street and the camera's like like just holding on him, walking away. Just like, huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Very dramatic.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Is this the end?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Thankfully it was not.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Okay. So let's dive in now officially. We're 20 minutes in. So the songs we're covering two songs today because the first song is an intro track. The first song is called One, and like every single Koh Heat album, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is some kind of instrumental first track.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Well, there's an intro track. They're not always instrumental. Both the reaping and uh That's what I meant.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

There's an introduction kind of track, like or like a prologue quote unquote to the album.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Yeah, there's there's always generally kind of a cinematic intro to the the record, and more often than not, it seems like it's instrumental, but not always. But yeah, so one is is the setting the stage track, and then the broken is where things really come into full swing.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

So one also was the only album, the only song on the album that was co-written by Atticus in the studio with Claudio, which I don't know if that has any real significance, but it does sort of it's a little bit of a different vibe for for Koheed, and I think it does set the tone really well for this album, and there's there's really not a whole lot going on on that song. It's it's pretty relatively brief, and there's just like ambiance, really.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Yeah, it's it's like a cinematic kind of soundscape sort of track, but there are there's musical things on that that are that that I think are fun and and that get overlooked. Most recently, it sort of got a bit of a reprise in the intro track to Vaxus 3, which is called Yesterday's Loss. There's some sonic elements from one that make their way into that track, so I thought that was kind of a fun way of tying things back together, but there's a one particular motif that's kind of layered in the piano melody of one that I thought was that I think is kind of relevant and that comes back in other cohi tracks as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah, they're really great at that, sprinkling little tidbits into their music from previous songs or like kind of connecting things. I did not know that about uh Goodbye Sunshine, so I'll have to go back and listen to that.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

But yesterday's lost.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Oh, sorry. Yesterday's lost. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

That's an intro track that is half instrumental and half not.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yeah. So I don't know how you feel about this. The prologue is mostly like history stuff. And I I guess before we get into the songs, there's a segment I wanted to do in every episode called Zach's Rapid Recap. And because this is sort of the beginning of the whole saga, I don't know how rapid it's gonna be, but Zach's gonna put on his professor cap here and sort of give you uh a layout of the world and where we are when we come into this particular story, because even though this is the first chapter, it's not like God created the world and then there was the year of the Black Rainbow. There was a there's a whole history behind the behind these characters in this world, and Zach's gonna lay it out for you as best he can.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Alright, buckle up, kids. It's gonna get intense. So, uh, in order to understand the story of Koheed and Cambria, we need to explore the setting, and I really think that the st that the song one is setting the cosmic scene of where we're at. This is a uh colony of 78 planets that are all relatively uniform in size and scale, arranged in a perfect triangle formation. They are surrounded by, or maybe I should say they're set on top of, a cluster of stars that also have a very interesting shape. If you look up Koheed and Cambria keywork, you will almost certainly find a picture of the band's logo, which is a triangle with seven circles, four large around the corners, and then excuse me, three large around the corners and four small ones. Those represent the stars and the planets of Heaven's Fence. If you want to get a real in-detail look at what this looks like, not just the drawing, uh look up the Amery Wars Heaven's Fence, and you'll find a couple of full-page comic spreads to get you a visualization of it. But so this is the story where everything takes place on which immediately sets uh sets up something important, which is that this is not necessarily science fiction, this is science fantasy. It takes place in a different universe other than ours. Or does it? We'll get back to that. So the key work. The key work is the energy source that not only binds all of these planets together in this perfect triangle shape, but it also provides life, that life energy on all the planets. I think of it as something kind of between the force in Star Wars and uh Mako or the energy of the planet in the Final Fantasy VII saga for all the deep lore nerds out there. In the Emery Wars, the keywork is this blue mystical energy that is supplied or powered by the stars, or maybe it fuels the stars, but it also provides the planets with life. So the keywork is essential toward keeping life ongoing and thriving and healthy on all the planets. It also holds the whole structure together. So, and without the keywork, theoretically, that maybe these planets would drift apart and crash into each other and cause great destruction. Maybe that happens, maybe it doesn't. We'll see. But so I think that the track one, being this totally instrumental cinematic track, is just kind of painting the sonic picture, if you will, of this backdrop.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

So the the keywork, all these planets, if I remember from the images that I've seen, they're all like right next to each other, like crammed into this triangle.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Yeah, they fill in the space. It's not like just the lines of the triangle, it's they f it's a solid triangle of planets.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Right. So they're they're all like right next to each other, all crammed in there like like a pool rack.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah, exactly. That's a great way to describe it. And there are seventy-eight planets, they're divided into twelve sectors. Most sectors have six, but I think two of them have nine. One of them might become a system that's familiar to us.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

So on all these, I mean, I don't know how deep I want to get into this with you, but are there are all of these planets inhabited? Are they all do they all have humans living on them? I I know there's there's the three different types of beings, which we'll get into, but what's what's the story with these planets? Is it is it is it all life?

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Great question. And for the most part, all the planets are capable of sustaining life. Now, some are maybe more remote than others, but they all have life on them. It's interesting that the first planet we actually get introduced to in the story is called the Howling Earth. Right. Now, the how the Howling Earth, this is a quote from the book, was aptly named. That much was beyond dispute. Why it howled, on the other hand, was a matter of very active discussion. The Howling Earth was sort of a barren planet. There it was sort of a mining planet by the time our story starts. Now, we don't know how much time has gone by in this fictional universe, whether it's thousands or millions of years or just hundreds. It's it's kind of unclear. But the inhabitants of this universe believe that it's part of God's design, and for the most part, all the planets are inhabited. There are three cataloged races in this universe. Man, who are human beings essentially, they look and you know, they they look and exist almost exactly like us, even down to their their daily life. They have houses that look like ours, they have cars that look like ours, and some planets, some planets are more kind of uh cyberpunk, sci-fi tech, but there are other planets that almost look exactly like Earth with different celestial bodies in the sky. But so humans, man, are the main inhabitants uh and the most popular race on Heaven's Fence. But there's two others as well. There are the Mage, which are sort of semi-divine beings. There's they they certainly have supernatural powers or abilities, uh, but they're sort of the the ruling class of Heaven's Fence. There are twelve mages specifically that are appointed to look after each sector of Heaven's Fence. Uh one of them gets a little greedy. We'll talk more about him shortly. But then there are also another race called the Prize, who are also blue. Why are they blue? Maybe because the keywork energy is blue. We don't really know that. That's not really been established. But the prize, uh all the mages appear for the most part, from what I've seen, as males, but the prize are all females. And they're sort of these like angelic cosmic beings that believe they were created by God to watch over heaven's fence and act as the guardians. So really they're kind of like the bridge between the heavens. The mages are the ruling class, and then men are like the worker bees on the colonies.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Okay. And I have a question about religion. I I know there's a lot of talk about God and God's will, and it's heaven's fence. But one thing that I don't see a lot, at least in these first few chapters that I have read, and from what I remember in the comics, I don't see a lot of church going.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Uh there are there there are churches in Heaven's Fence. We don't actually know the name of the religion, the dominant religion that most inhabitants subscribe to, but there is a Kohit equivalent of the Holy Vi the Holy Bible. It's called the Book of the Gonsgrad. I'm looking at the Kohit Wikipedia page for it right now. It says the Book of the Gonsgrad is a religious text that outlines the structure and destiny of Heaven's fence. It is widely believed to be written by God himself and contained prophecies in cryptic language that led many to the debate its meaning. As the full text was not recorded to us, the following are excerpts and has been paraphrased, has not been recorded. So that's important. We only ever get to read bits and pieces of this book called the Gonsgrad. So this is you know the good book of whatever religion this is. But again, we don't it doesn't have a name, it's just kind of the one everyone subscribes to a monotheistic belief that there is a god or there's not a god, but there's no multi-god pantheons out there. It's either you believe in God or you don't. And you believe in the Gonsgrad or you don't.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

So if one is kind of like the setting or the introduction, the first actual track on the album is called The Broken. And like I would say it's the Broken itself is more chapter two of the novel. We can touch on chapter one also, but chapter one I think fits better with Juggernaut, and it's kind of it's in the future, right? Like it's w what's what's the term you used for it?

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Somewhere in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Some well, right. This that's in there, but there there's like a a literature a literary term, right, for in in in media ray or something.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Oh in media in media ray. Yeah, it starts in media ray, meaning it starts in the middle of something happening.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yeah. And we're just giving these characters Koheed and Cambria with no background, and they're on their first mission, and Inferno's there out in space, being the guy in the chair. And I mean, we can go over it all. It was a long chapter, a long introduction to the the group, but it's basically there on the howling earth, which I had a question about that. I'll get to that in a minute. And they're investigating, I guess, keywork energy is being drained, and they're trying to figure out why that's happening, and they come across some baddies and some people like draining the uh the keywork energy and some baddies, like some smoking hot babes. Yeah, well, that's what they think about Cambria, by the way. They're just uh there's there's a line in there about somebody wanting to like set up a tent on co or Cambria's boobs, which I thought was funny. Uh you know, a little bit a little bit silly. But and then Miley. Yeah, you know what, well, why not? Who who who isn't sometimes?

SPEAKER_00 37:20

He has a song about sex, about uh phone sex. Do you know that?

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Which one is that?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Uh Camper Valorium 2, I want to say. Or maybe it's one. Faint of Hearts.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Okay. I could see that. We'll we'll get to that. But anyway, uh, so it's a bunch of the Red Army guys down there, and Mayo's down there. And at this time, Coheed and Cambria are not known to Mayo or Wilhelm Ryan, and this was a nice big introduction. We get to see both of their powers in action and see how they work as a team, they're dynamic, and that's that's basically chapter one in a nutshell. Like I say, it's really long, there's a lot more detail to it than that.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Two things. One, it's interesting that you pronounce his name as Mayo. Uh I've always pronounced it mayo. What made you say Mayo rather than mayo?

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Mayo, mayo. Let's call the whole thing off.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Uh he says I need I need mayo in Here Shot Kid Disasters, so that led to many memes of uh Wilhelm Ryan wanting a condiment on his sandwiches because it's too dry.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Yeah, I I guess maybe that's why I went with the Mayo instead of the Mayo, is because I feel like it's a good one. So you didn't get confused with mayonnaise? Mayo's a name and mayo's a condiment. Uh but for for for here on out, you know, it's like people say Thanos and Thanos. No one says Thanos, and if they do then they're wrong. Well, I was just gonna say when the movie came out, finally it was known that was Thanos. This is a real thing. Go look it up. When there was just comics, people weren't sure if it was Thanos or Thanos.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Well, people can't read. There's one important element of chapter one I think that we should hit on, and and you you mentioned it briefly, which the whole reason they went to the Howling Earth is to investigate the disappearance of keywork energy. And again, this is the energy that sustains life on this whole universe from what we know, but it's dissipating on this one particular planet. They find that it's being drained by the Red Army and harvested for something they don't know what, but they also discover something far more shocking and kind of life-altering for what people on Heaven's Fence know is that the keywork actually is made of or I shouldn't say it's made of, but the souls of the dead sort of make up the energy that is the keywork. And so when the keywork is harvested and collected in one area, but then the harvester is broken, all the energy spills out, it quite literally becomes like the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark with these horrible spirits kind of floating around and like inhabiting people's bodies and like making people explode from the inside out. It's very, very brutal, uh, which is a theme you'll find in a lot of Claudio's work.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Yeah, a lot of a lot of graphic violence just because he wants to. But uh I had two two quick questions for you. First one is, and maybe this is a file this away for later, but the howling earth versus silent earth. Is silent earth an actual planet? And is it like on the opposite end of the howling earth? Or like are they like are they like, you know, you know, good twin, bad twin?

SPEAKER_00 40:28

So interestingly enough, silent earth is an actual planet. We don't I don't believe it's in the same system as the Howling Earth, but Silent Earth was not called Silent Earth at first. You might think logically that Howling Earth became the Silent Earth, but it that's not true. There was another planet called Paris Earth, and that was the capital planet of Sector 12. Uh we learn a lot more about that planet in the next chapter of the saga, which is the second stage turbine blade, but long story short, and mild spoiler alert, but Paris Earth becomes Silent Earth 3. Howling Earth is, from what we know, still a different planet. I don't know of any exact correlation between the two planets, but it is interesting that their names are sort of the opposites of each other.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Yeah, I just I thought that was interesting. And then the other thing, which is maybe worth bringing up later, but I thought of it now. So Inferno or Jesse is technically quote unquote Kohid's brother, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Yeah, they're they kind of assume the roles of of brother and brother, but I I in in the sense that they were also created by the same person too. That's something we haven't really established yet, is Coheed, Cambria, and Inferno are all artificial beings called iRobots, which we touch we can touch more on later when we get kind of get back to this main part of the story. But they're artificially created by scientists, and so yeah, they are brothers, I guess, in that sense.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

So then hear me out. Brother and sister.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Don't like that. No, no, I I I see your logic and I reject it.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

I I it just it just occurred to me there was some real Luc and Leia shit going on there, potentially.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

So Cambria is specifically made from different DNA. They established that. Um but you say so. You know what? The Amor Wars just became Game of Thrones.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

All right. Well, we don't have to dwell on that. That was just something I thought about.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Um, I again I reject it. We will not be re we will not be bringing this up again.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Okay. Well th thematically, the song The Broken, I don't think has a lot to do with that chapter. I think it's much more about the next chapter. And yeah, okay. So the the next chapter is really kind of a a setting of the mages and getting to know sort of their background. There's a little bit on the mage wars, I believe, in this chapter. And it's really the dynamic between Covent Marth and Wilhelm Ryan, and Wilhelm Ryan's potential ascent for power and corruption. Covent Marth has like a premonition, or he has the ability to sort of see the future, I believe, and he is convinced and knows that Wilhelm Ryan is bad. He's gonna be a harbinger of doom, basically. He's it's bad times, and as far as I know, all the other mages are like, yeah, Mr. Premonition, man, like I don't believe you. This this is fine.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

All the mages have unique abilities that set them apart, and Covent Marth's unique abilities, he has the ability of foresight, so kind of like Anakin Skywalker, he can see things before they Happen. But unfortunately, the downside is that sometimes they're just fucking straight up wrong. And so he'll it kind of becomes a chicken little thing where he tells the other mages, like, oh, this is gonna happen, and then it doesn't happen, and they're like, or the boy who cried Wolf, I guess. And so they're like, Yeah, right, Kevin Marth, whatever. And all the other mages apparently support Wilhelm Ryan becoming a mage, uh, which by the way, mage is a species, but it's also a role, and there are confirmed to be more mages in existence that are just born that way, but they also have to ascend into that role and kind of be grafted into it too. So there is a like a like a trial phase you sort of have to go through to be anointed into the Council of Mages. So this is right after Wilhelm Ryan has ascended into his role of mage of Sector 6. So he's got his one sector to look after. Uh he replaced a previous mage who died of old age, which I think was implied to be like thousands of years old. And it's a good run. Yeah, he's uh he's having a good time right now. But Covent Marth is not. Covenant Marth has a vision of him bringing death and destruction across Heaven's Fence. Uh, and lo and behold, Covent Marth, of course, is correct that Wilhelm Ryan would bring about chaos and death. But when Marth tries to confront him about this, he actually invites him over for like a little chit-chat while he's having it while he's drawing a nice casual mural of some some prize burning in the sky.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah, just you know, normal, normal stuff.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Yeah, and like blood, like the universe tearing itself open and blood dripping out onto the planets.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Yeah, and he's very sort of I I don't know if nonchalant is the word, but like just in general, he's got all he's got all these thoughts about Wilhelm Ryan. Very casual. And he's just like talking to him like, hey dude, like, come on now, you're not really gonna do this, right? Or actually, you you you are gonna do this, and just you know, maybe chill out, bro. Yeah, maybe don't. Yeah. It's like we we we kind of like living, you know.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

But that's it.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Unfortunately didn't work out for him.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Yeah. That that's kind of the dynamic of this chapter, and sort of the broken in general, is it's setting the world, setting the timeline in terms of we're pre-mage war. It's it's setting up for the mage war. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Yeah, the next chapter goes into the full breakdown of the mage war. So this is the the event leading up to it. We get a brief introduction, not just to Ryan and Marth, but also to their right hand men. We get Mayo Defton Wolf previously mentioned in the chapter one. He's the top j top general for the Red Army, kind of the the Darth Vader, if you will, to the Emperor Palpatine. And on the opposite side for Covent Marth, his right-hand man is uh being called Vilar Krom, who we only ever see him in his full armor, including helmets, so we don't really know what he looks like underneath his armor, but he's pretty cool looking. If you if you look up Vilar Krom, V-I-E-L-A-R-C-R-O-M, uh you'll find pictures of him. And he kind of looks like a mixture between like Boba Fett and like the Emperor's Red Guards a little bit. Like just really cool, like 90s sci-fi design. But he is uh he he's diametrically opposed at this point the story to Ryan and to the Red Army, which by the way, it's not really it's kind of just glossed over by the fact that Ryan has a whole army called the Red Army. He essentially has a Gestapo police force working for him already in his section that he uses to take over the rest of the rest of Heaven's Fence.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Yeah, the other mages are like, that's cool, bro. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Yeah, it's it's tot it's totally fine. Make him wear body cams, you know.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Yeah, then then everything's good. Just stop stop separating families.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

Yeah, no, no um uh uncalled for traffic stops, and everything will be fine.

SPEAKER_01 47:53

Right. Okay, so that about sums up the lore in the chapter. But the other thing I wanted to do with these episodes is kind of break down the music and the lyrics. And before we get into that, I did have a quote from Claudio specifically about the broken. I believe this was straight from those track-by-track videos that are on YouTube. They're they're pretty cool. There's track by track for every track on the year of the black rainbow. They're about a minute or so each, so real quick, easy deep dive. And Claudio has a quote and it says this The Broken is very much about coming to terms with your weaknesses and your flaws, and those really make you you. And in acknowledging them, you become empowered and strengthened.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

I l I like that quote because it paints it in a very positive light, but I think that when you look at the lyrics and take them in the context of the lore, it's very much from the perspective of Wilhelm Ryan, the bad guy. Yeah, and so it's it's like he's he's kind of like, you know, just believe in yourself, Ryan. Take all the these are the things that make you you, and you should be proud of that.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Yeah. Okay, so musically the song hits you right away. Bam! There's no real intro. It gets you right into the first verse, and the first verse lyrics are I followed your every move in a stride that wills disguise, little markings, clue the find, your red lips of painted fig speak of painted figures, the teeth of mangled little listeners, the thoughts that hide your rusty scissors, and hooded men are swinging honestly across the this violence. Obscurity has no hero.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Yeah, they're they're back and forth. I think that there are certain lines in there, I mean, especially when they talk about Red Lib speaking of painted figures, because he's quite literally painting figures while he talks to Wilhelm Ryan. I think, again, for the most part, that the the lyrics would be from Ryan's point of view, but I could see you can look at it from from Covent Marth as well. The Obscurity has no hero. It kind of feels like Ryan taunting Marth or anyone opposed to him. Like there's no one coming to save you.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

No one can like there is no god that's gonna intervene. There's no higher power that is gonna come and step in here. Like, I am the Supreme Tri Mage, and you will bow down to me.

SPEAKER_01 51:29

Yeah. I I I actually think in terms of the lore, this is a pretty pretty lore heavy song and lyrics in general, but you could paint it in the real world because you know Claudio tends to write about his real life also before the lore and sort of works the lore around that. And I don't really know how this would fit into his real life per se, but other than perhaps painting himself as an outsider or his fans kind of as an outsider, that that they're outsiders, that they they follow the band, and they're they're there, they're they're a little bit left of center, and I don't know, it's maybe a bit of a stretch, but I don't really know how it relates to the his real life otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

I think you could be right there about all the above in terms of you know, he's painting both his himself, his fans, and his band as sort of being these outcasts on the brink.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

They are the broken.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah, they are they are the broken. And especially after you mentioned earlier that the last album almost broke Cohit and Cambria. So this is coming from a place where he's feeling probably rather vulnerable, almost sort of wounded a little bit. And they're kind of trying to pick up the pieces and finish off this chapter of the story, and also you know, maybe sort of close close the page on this chapter of that that their life as a band.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Right. Potentially the band in general, if you listen to that one quote. But anyway, the the music for this, it's got that that Koheed epic feel to it. They they it is like it it sets you right into this almost sounds like a war or a battle scene, just you know, it's kind of their one of their trademarks. But the production you can tell right away it sounds sort of different than most Koheed records, but it's not like full industrial, it's not like they made a nine-inch nails record or something like that. It's it's still very coheed. There's a riffs, and uh for me as a drummer, the biggest difference is the drumming. And I think the drumming for Chris Penny on this particular song, it's about as normal as like Chris Penny can be. He he's he's a very different drummer than Josh. He's to for lack of better words, he's kind of wild and crazy and all over the place with his polyrhythms and all his crazy fills, and he's really fast, and he does odd time signatures and all kinds of things. And this song, he's playing a fairly standard beat, but there's a lot of open hi-hat stuff going on, like little hi-hat claps, and he does these cool, like kind of triplet feels and or fills, excuse me, and in general, the feel has like this kind of swing to it all the way through the song. In the rock setting, it's kind of interesting and cool, and the production on the drums overall to me, it's a little more tinny, a little more sharp and punctuating than Josh's rock. Yeah, it's a little more like that than it is sort of Josh's thunderous big tones. And there's nothing wrong with Chris Penny's tones. It's it's very it's got a thing, and it's it's a cool thing. It works for this record.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

Absolutely. I love his little embellishments that he adds onto things like that because he's generally pretty tasteful about them. He doesn't go overboard with them, but he he adds his little Chris Penny kind of sonic texture things here and there that set apart his drumming style from Josh's. Now, I preferred, you know, I think most Koheed fans would say they they love Josh and would prefer him as as the drummer for Koheed, but at this era of Koheed, I I love what he did for for this this for this record and and this part of their their their story as a band. This song, I was just thinking about this right now. Is this the most metal song on this record? I guess maybe in the flame of error is more metal, but this is there's a lot of metal elements in this song. Uh just really heavy guitar parts, uh, you know, proggy, riffs, drum-wise, it's very heavy, very technical. And his voice is kind of like it's it's much more sort of aggressive than the case. Yeah, it's it's pretty aggro for Claudio. Yeah, yeah, for sure. He comes, he comes right out the gate swinging in this, you know, kind of hard rock metal opener. And it's not, it's so some Koheed records, especially recent ones, uh, start with what I call like a happy Koheed song. There's like kind of like a big posy, like major chorus, major chord progression, big chorus kind of sing-along vibe. And this is maybe not what I'd call that. It's it's very dark, it's very just like it's very broody, it's angry, uh, it's very sci-fi dystopian. It sets a the mood for what this record is, though.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Yeah, it's it's intense. It's it's a really interesting opener. Even some of the songs that are epic openers, like Welcome Home or In Keeping Secrets, have it kind of leads you into it. This one is just a punch right away, right in the beginning of the song. You're bam, you're into this song, and it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:16

Well, you kind of almost need, in my opinion, like one and the broken almost go hand in hand, like prologue and dark sentencer. Like they flow right into the other. But with that said, if I want to listen to the broken, I'm not necessarily always going to put on one first. I I do like to get straight into it.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Right. So let's move on. The chorus is next. I'll give you the lyrics for the chorus. The world looks better when you're falling, brace to comfort enough to crawl, and divided, we must pray for the broken to order pizzas. We are, will always be the wrong.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

You get those from my genius lyrics.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

Yeah. Why?

SPEAKER_00 56:55

Nothing, no reason.

SPEAKER_01 56:58

No, no, no. I'm just being silly. That's a quote unquote misheard lyric. The lyrics are actually and divided, we must pray for the broken, no one could fix us.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

I like your version better.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

Yeah, who doesn't want pizzas?

SPEAKER_00 57:14

The word I there's no good answer to that question. Everyone wants pizza.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

Anyway, so what do you think about the the lyrics to this song, or the the chorus in particular?

SPEAKER_00 57:45

Um, so I've always sort of been puzzled by that line, the world looks better when you're falling. I don't know if it's necessarily meant to be sang by a specific character, or if it's just kind of setting the stage for this universe that's on the brink of collapse. That's that's sort of my interpretation of that particular line. But again, grace to comfort enough to crawl in. I think you said a long time ago uh when we were talking about the song, it the the lines sort of made you feel like falling from grace, combining those two lines.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

Yeah. I in a in a way, if you want to relate it to the band, it could be like they could be thinking that that they were on their way down from their their great success of Good Apollo One and Welcome Home, and they could be talking about how the world looks better now that they've had their success and and they've gotten beyond it and they're they're coming down off of it now. The pressure is maybe off, or maybe the pressure's on and they don't give a fuck. I don't know. But there is there is an element of falling from grace, I think, that that makes sense with these lyrics.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

Yeah. I hear a dog in the background. Is that Apollo? Good Apollo, where should I begin?

SPEAKER_01 58:55

Yeah, that's my almost deaf dog who even if I yelled for her to stop, she might not hear me. I don't know why she's barking.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

She wants to be she has things she wants to contribute to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

Yeah, apparently. She's a big coheat fan. Well, yeah, the the the chorus, the lyrics the one thing about the delivery of the lyrics is even though they're kind of dense in terms of thematically, they're very catchy. And it's one of Claudio's sort of signature moves is writing these weird science-y lyrics or these kind of lyrics that don't they're not just sort of normal and straightforward, like I love this girl, she's so cool, or whatever. Nobody likes you when you're 23.

SPEAKER_00 59:39

Incense and flowers, oh girl, oh my Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

He doesn't do that, but the song, it's catchy as fuck, like it's a really good chorus.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

It it is, it's a really fantastic chorus. I'm jealous you got to see this live on the cruise last year, right?

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Yeah, it's a big shock and surprise at the uh the encore of their never render set. They they busted this one out, and it was really it was fun. It was cool seeing Josh play the song, and like it it got everyone, I think you included, uh, who heard about this from the outside, that maybe we're gonna get a never render for Year of the Black Rainbow.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:16

Yeah, this was supposed to be the summer of Year of the Black Rainbow.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

This was supposed to be the summer of George.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

I am curious because I have only seen Koheed with for in this area one time, and it was not for the support tour for this record, it was actually the never ender of In Keeping Secrets, but it was also like an evening with second stage. Even evening with Koed of the Cambrian. Oh, excuse me. Never ender of a second stage, but it was an evening with Koed and Cambria. And I'm looking at the set list now, I just pulled it up. They did not play The Broken at this show. So I to my knowledge have never seen it live.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

They did play Iron Fist.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:56

Which is crazy, right? A whole two years before they released that song. When has that happened?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

Yeah, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

But and they also played Elf Tower, New Mexico.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

Right. What a what a time. Anyway, musically the chorus, again, the drums from a drummer's perspective, it's about as normal as Chris Penny, I think, can be. He's playing a standard beat, but there's a lot of stuff going on underneath the surface there. It's he's gotta Chris Penny it a little bit, you know. He's gotta he's gotta put his his funk on it. And then the the guitars to me are very kind of soaring, almost anthemic here, and it sounds like an epic, an epic, almost like you're falling. Maybe that's why the the lyrics say that, because it feels like a like like something rapid is happening, something intense is happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:43

There are these like cascading guitar lines in the chorus specifically. It's really interesting. They have this kind of like shimmering reverb on them, but it does have even though it's ascending, it does give the feeling of falling too, which is actually that's kind of interesting. I realize he talks about falling while the chords are ascending, and that's kind of interesting. Maybe that's the chords rushing up past him as you're falling. Just spend falling here.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

Yeah, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:09

Let me uh let me get Claudio on the phone here and we can ask him directly, hey Claudio.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

I gotta go.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

If only. Anyway, so after that we get to the second verse. The second verse, lyrically, is much shorter.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:24

It starts with a bunch of blah blahs, blah blah blah blah, and then it says if I had a nickel for every time Koheed put blah blah blah blah in a song, I'd have two nickels, which is not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:39

Is there something there, perhaps? Who knows? But anyway, the the lyrics go the blah blah blahs, and then your touch seeds of emptiness, the callus tips against the brush, the world's now breaking off to crust. You know.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

Even though he knows they're 100% right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:30

Yeah, th this definitely feels like a Ryan verse, but the specific talking about the callus tips against the brush, that also brings me back to the image of him painting the blood or the flames in the sky and the world's now breaking off to crust. That to me is definitely foreshadowing for the thing that is warned about from almost the very beginning of the story, which is that, you know, if the keywork energy is destroyed, then all the planets would fall would crash into each other and break apart. And that's uh that's a threat we get a lot in this story. Does it happen? You'll have to keep listening to us or keep reading the story to see. But definitely it's also interesting that this comes out right after No World for Tomorrow, where Claudio knows what the story of that record is. Maybe not to a T, but I'm sure he has the ending of it figured out in his mind of what what he wants it to be. But now he gets to do a little foreshadowing to it in this record.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Yeah. So then the next part in the song is The Bridge. It has uh bit of a music breakdown and that part. And after that it goes into a another cool kind of musical part, but there's lyrics, and the lyrics are Where was your heart when we needed it most? Live in denial, and I'll be your ghost. There is nothing to let go, only time will let you know if you're worth anything, you'll know that I'm giving up way too early. Let the axis turn you free and destroy everything you love.

unknown 1:06:00

Destroy Frisbee.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:05

And so that's a little oh go sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:09

No, go ahead. You were gonna say something important. It's it's profound.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

To me, that that is that's a file this away for later lyric, uh, because that in the very first track of this record sets the stage for what the crux problem for this whole story is gonna be, which is would you destroy the world to save the one you love? And the answer is Yes, with an asterisk.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:37

So m musically speaking, the the part when the lyrics come in, it it's got a cool like drum fill, or he does a lot of sixteenth note fills across the kit, and it's leading up to the There is Nothing to Let Go part of the song, and that kind of gets to this intense sort of rolling feel, and it's it's it's loud, it's kind of raucous and rambunctious, and from a drumming perspective, like Chris is playing the like kind of frantic ride symbol rolling over the kit. It reminds me actually a lot of the incomplete, the ending of the incomplete, sort of the uh the climax of that song. I don't know if if there is other musical sonic uh uh comparisons or similarities there, but to me that was the vibe I got, at least from the drumming perspective, and and the song's intensity in general. And if you think about that song, The Incomplete, Chris did not play on that song, but the the word everyone accepts is that he wrote the parts for that song. And obviously Taylor Hawkins probably played his version of that part, but he was given a part to learn. And that's those two things I just wanted to point that out, kind of kind of feel the same, vibey, at least to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

Yeah, and for clarification, when you say the incomplete, you do mean the end complete three, the end complete.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:16

Right, yes, sorry, excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:18

Just just making sure. Because yes, that is exactly what I get out of it too. That very much feels like a sonic, I don't know if it's a callback, but it's it's it, you know, it shares the same DNA with that part. And it's interesting that the incomplete is quite literally about the end of the universe breaking apart, and this is also teasing that same thing. So maybe that's maybe that's kind of Chris's version of this is what I this is what I hear when I think of planets crashing into each other, is this drum part.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

Yeah, and uh I would not I like to think of Claudio knowing everything about everything in terms of these songs, and like, yeah, of course, of course we did that on purpose. Like that that's that's meant to be a callback to that. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it is interesting that this song is potentially sort of giving you the concept that this could be a thing that happens or that this this is something that happens, and then that song is kind of when it actually happens.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:09

Right, yeah. We'll get to that. Really really cool stuff. You you skipped over a really, I think, important part though, this song, just before the part we're at right now, which is the uh wait, maybe I'm ahead of it. Maybe does it does the guitar solo come after that?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:24

Yeah, the bridge ends with the guitar solo. Sorry. And for those astute listeners, there's a familiar lick in the guitar solo, but it I I remember listening to it when it was fresh and not not hearing it, not hearing it forever, and now I can't unhear it now that I mean now that we know it's there. I don't know how long. I mean it was I think he I think Claudio teased it way back in the day and and we knew it, but like it's very it's very prominent in my ears now.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:03

So the part that we are referring to, of course, is what I think is mostly referred to as the keywork theme. It is the most clearly heard in the intro track The Ring in Return off of Inkeeping Secrets of Saliner 3, but this motif occurs uh at several places throughout the main Amory Wars records. It's at the end of Everything Evil, it's at the end of God Said Conspirator, it's at the end of Light in the Glass, and it's also at the beginning of Good Apollo Volume 1. And so we hear just the very first few notes, this little kind of tease of the motif, but we don't hear it played in full. It branches off into its own guitar solo. And I think that the reason that and I think Claudio has stated this as much, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe we all just assumed it. But I believe the reason that he doesn't play the theme in full at all on this record, even though it is the best prequel record it would make sense to have the keyword theme played, is because Josh wrote that motif. And he didn't want to play it in full because Josh was not in the band at this time. But it was still such an integral part of Koheed's DNA DNA that he had to represent it here. That is the second recurring motif. I touched on it earlier, but winding the clock way back to one, you can hear what I can only hear as the second stage motif. The those three notes that you also hear in second stage and uh keeping the blade and on the brink. Again, I think you hear it very faintly at the beginning of one. So here in these first two tracks, you have these little hints at these two really important motifs that will come back later in a big way.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:46

Yeah, so the the the song kind of after the guitar solo sort of explodes, it's like the story is launching, really like the whole Amory Wars saga is here we go, and it has an extended last chorus and an outro, and the outro is very similar kind of to the verse in terms of the feeling of it, and it has these kind of triplet D feel fills, and it also ends not abruptly, but like definitively.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:21

And that is The Broken. I mean, it's an awesome song. There's also a music video, technically, for this song. I don't know if it was officially like released to like MTV and stuff, or if it was just like a like a a fan art project or what it was, but it's it's definitely it's it's definitely like uh it's official.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:37

It's on their vivo or their YouTube account now. I just watched it. Oh, sorry, I'm playing it right now. Let me stop. Um Okay, that was just my headphones. I literally just watched it before we recorded the podcast. Me too. Honestly, I I liked it more than I thought I would. It's just kind of interesting. The the artwork has this really interesting blend of like both like sort of CGI, but also like real-world, like it feels like model work almost, even though it's probably mostly CG. It's very tactile, but it's it's more of a like a visualizer rather than like a full story music video. It's a bunch of like scenes of black and white and red, uh, war, like sci-fi spaceships and like Walker type robots you know, fighting, shooting at each other, lots of rockets being launched, but also like the ships have like these like teeth on them. It's just really cool and stylized, and and it's it's it just kind of seems like it it it feels like this is like one day of the mage war and some of the the chaos and destruction that's wrought from it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:43

Yeah, right. I was gonna say, like it feels like you're right in the middle of the mage war and you get to see all the stuff that's going on. I don't really know what all the different ships were and things like that, you know, but it the the animation, if you want to call it that, whatever it was, was I thought really unique and interesting and cool, and and it is a video that I think I don't know about forgotten about, but it's just this song and this album in general are not talked about that much in the Koheed circles. And I think this this video, if you haven't seen it, is worth checking out, or if you have seen it, go back and revisit it because it's pretty neat.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:13

Yeah, uh there's also a interesting video circling back to something we talked about earlier of them playing this song live on the tour for this record, and Claudio's guitar goes out or something, maybe it's out of tune, maybe a string breaks, I don't know what, but it's you know, I think they were opening the the set with this song, and something's up with his guitar, so he like takes his guitar, he gets mad, he chucks it, and then they continue playing the song, and he just grabs the microphone, and and that's kind of like the first exploration of like badass Claudio Frontman, just a mic, no guitar, taking command of the stage. I will have to just look up Claudio Broken, no guitar, you'll find to look that up.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:52

Maybe we'll we'll link it on the Instagram page. Oh man. But yeah, that kind of concludes the broken. I think we did a pretty good job laying it all out. And just for everyone's curiosity, the cadence of this podcast is we're gonna try to release an episode every two weeks to give us time to record and edit the episodes. Lucky for all of you lovely listeners who've made it this far, an hour plus into the podcast. We actually are dropping two episodes on this first day. So if you like what you heard, we have another episode right now that you can listen to for Guns of Summer, the next track, which is uh crazy track. And yeah, that's uh that's that's about it for what we're trying to do here. Any final final word on the broken or one, Zach?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

Uh no. I mean, I could talk about these songs all day and all night, but I'm not sure that anyone want to listen to them for that long. We already have an hour plus, so we could probably cap it here. But thanks for listening. Hope you guys enjoy it. And uh, yeah, like Joel said, if you like it, go listen to the next episode. Give us a follow on uh Instagram. And if you're in San Antonio uh tomorrow, which will be July 29th, uh, or today, if you're in Dallas, come see us because we'll be at both shows.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:09

That will be it would be exciting to see to meet someone who potentially heard us earlier that morning. It'd be crazy. But anyway, yeah, check us out on Instagram at the Koheed Chronicles, and you can see links to our pertinent socials on there. And for now, this is the Koheed Chronicles just uh checking out, signing off.