#yearoftheblackrainbow

Favorite song from #yearoftheblackrainbow @cobaltcalcium: #NoMatterTheDistance #NoMatterHowFar https://www.instagram.com/p/B-avCKrAFqk/?igshid=19x88h82cl8kh

Pearl in the stars #coohedandcambria #yearoftheblackrainbow #lyrics #bestbandever

I love how certain things cause me to rewind. A photo, a quote, a song, or in this case the anniversary of an album. I find myself looking back on past tense me. I have a pretty shoddy memory, I'm awful with names and details, but I know quite exactly where I was and what I was doing when Year of the Black Rainbow came out. I remember my reaction, and I remember the uniquely amazing time this album helped me through. Year of the Black Rainbow was the very first box set preorder I ever made. It was the first time my husband-to-be got the slightest clue of how deep the Coheed universe ran inside me. I was beside myself with excitement, even for the Black Card even though at that point I hadn't ever been to a show, and didn't really intend to because traveling to a show just wasn't feasible in my mind. Fast forward to release day, this day in Coheed history, April 13th, 2010. I hadn't received my box set or a shipping notification, so I checked on my order only to find out that I wouldn't be receiving one at all. My own error. Devastated doesn't even begin to cover it. So I did what I do, I figured since I was already gonna be late to the party I could wait just a little longer. I went down to my local record store, Meridian Underground Music, and had them order a CD for me. I could have went to FYE and snagged it, but I like to shop local when I can. A few days later I drove downtown and picked it up after work, anxious to finally hear what would follow the sheer epic productions that were Good Apollo 1 & No World For Tomorrow. I ran to my car, ripped open the cellophane and popped it into the CD player.... I got about as far as Guns of Summer before I actually said out loud to myself, "what the fuck is this?" I'm sure there was a look of disgust on my face, I'm sure if you looked up the definition of "snotty little brat" in the dictionary there would have been a picture of my face at that moment. I didn't even bother to listen to the rest that day. I put it back in the case and went home. I complained profusely to my fiancée, declaring that this was NOT my Coheed, what had happened to the band I loved so completely in the 3 years since No World for Tomorrow? WHY, COHEED, WHY? "Hey, Cyn, remember that you didn't like Second Stage at one point?" Okay, yeah but... "Try it again." And I did. Thanks, self. I listened a lot. I didn't understand the ambient noise. I didn't understand the massive audible change in Coheed's essential sound. I would teach myself to love it, but really it was circumstance that made it happen. In April of 2010 I was wedding planning, just two months until I would be tied forever to the man I had spent my last three years with. Prior to meeting him my longest relationship fell just short of a whopping one year. When May rolled around it brought me cold feet. I. Was. Scared. My stupid brain was conjuring up fear because I saw myself as damaged. Every single relationship I had prior to him was a failure, I had been bent and broken so many times before, led completely astray by someone whispering that they loved me while simultaneously ripping my heart out of my chest as a trophy. Here, take this piece of me, I don't need it. Did I want to give this very final piece? I ran through the awful things our relationship had already survived. This happened, will it happen again? Am I doing the right thing? Do I have enough trust to give? This is forever, Cyndi, think. Isn't anxiety a banging good time? Furthermore, I am a lover, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I believe that it is thoroughly possible to love more than one person at a time, that the universe will send people for you to love, and to love you, throughout your lifetime. Not necessarily romantic love, but just as overwhelming and sometimes even debilitating, and it doesn't stop just because you've chosen your life partner and built a life with them, and it certainly doesn't mean you abandon one for the other. I've since learned to ration the energy that goes into loving my husband and that which goes into other people placed in my life's path, which is no easy feat. I love fiercely and completely, it's exhausting sometimes. And painful, but you have to feel it to work through it, shutting out any type of feeling isn't healthy. The woes of a bleeding heart. I digress, back to the point. In all of my doubt and worry I began to take comfort from some lyrics on YOBR. When skeletons live: "As all time moves, you'll be riddled with doubt, you mourn to pull through but love is dangerous" Here we are Juggernaut: "courage broken, lashed to scars, can this love be what I want? Body's breaking driving me crazy it's your fault" World of Lines: "this heart is everlasting pushing forward never crashing" Far: "I might be sick, broken torn to pieces" Made out of Nothing: "someone please come shelter me from all that I am and never again will I believe the same old story" This Shattered Symphony: "converging closer and faster, does all I touch turn to dust?" Flame of Error: "how can I gain from another when the other goes? This hand, this hurt, my heart." I learned to love YOBR, even though I didn't understand it, even though the production was noisy, and even though, at the time, I felt like it didn't lend itself well to the rest of the discography. Year of the Black Rainbow warmed my cold feet and transported me to a place of readiness, ready to settle down, ready to get married, ready to take on the beautiful mess of life with my love by my side as my husband. And every time a marital crisis has occurred, it's YOBR that I usually turn to, it gets me through it by helping me gain perspective, or even just by dragging my feelings out of me so that they're no longer chewing out my heart. As a side note: For this reason, when my husband and I decided to get a couples tattoo this year I specifically chose a lyric from YOBR. That was no accident, and not just because the lyric is lovey and perfect, this album opened the doors for the next chapter of my own life, and it's the ground I stand on when my own is shaky so I had to pay it a permanent homage. As more time passed it really grew on me but it didn't really feel "whole" to me. As I mentioned, I never got that box set, so I was missing what, for me, was a non-negotiable piece of Coheed: the story. Two years would pass before I would discover that the novel was available digitally. Reading that book changed absolutely everything. I'm going to say that again, READING THE YEAR OF THE BLACK RAINBOW NOVEL CHANGES EVERYTHING. If you listen to the soundtrack for a musical without ever actually seeing the production, chances are you're not going to get it. You could pick up bits and pieces of the story line here and there, but until you've seen it for yourself you probably won't understand the driving force behind the intricate patterns and themes woven into the soundtrack because the very fabric of the pair is the story being told on the stage, the music is just a prop to that. That being said, it is completely true that you do not need to follow The Amory Wars concept in order to love the musical stylings of Coheed & Cambria. They absolutely stand well on their own apart from each other, and being able to pair them together is like a frosting filled cupcake. Sure you don't *need* frosting on the inside, but once you bite into it you can't imagine ever having had a cupcake without it before because YUM. BUT, between the drastic change in sound from previous albums and the colossal change in production thematics I strongly INSIST that the YOBR novel be read to truly appreciate the accompanying album. When I finally did read the book it was exactly like I had been staring at a blurry picture and it just snapped into focus. And it really was just like that, all of a sudden it clicked and everything made sense. Let's discuss. [SPOILERS AHEAD] Maybe you haven't read the novel, or maybe you did and you missed the fucking point, either way, the key to loving Year of the Black Rainbow is in that book. You just have to reach out and take it. Claudio Sanchez has a true gift for breathing life into a fictional character, a rare and special talent. The ability to make your characters so real that your reader sees them as real, suffers with them, feels their pain, smiles at their triumphs, and maybe even yells at them when they do something seemingly stupid. (Maybe that's just me, but goddammit Leonard DO NOT MAKE THAT VIRUS!) What I offer here is my explanation to the "noisy" production of the album itself. To summarize the novel, YOBR is the beginning of The Amory Wars, but let's set aside Coheed and Cambria for right now, try to focus on everything else that takes place in the novel. It's the beginning of the end for Apity Prime, and the rest of Heaven's Fence for that matter. Wilhelm Ryan has declared himself supreme tri-Mage, he has destroyed or ensnared each of the other 11 mages save for one. He is collecting energy from the life force of the universe and he is turning that same universe into a living nightmare. It's a war. People are dying, people are killing each other. Leonard Hohenberger loses everything, first his only son, then his wife to insanity followed by suicide, then his own life. He's forced to create a virus deadly to all of existence. Pressure, pain, loss, suffering, war, murder, rivers of blood, piles of bodies, explosions, it's over....it's over....it's all coming apart. The very theme of the book is so greatly different from the goings-on in the rest of The Amory Wars. It's gritty and messy and awful, the people of Heaven's Fence are experiencing the beginning of a war, the Mage War, everything they've known their entire lives is changing horribly right in front of their eyes. So close your eyes, clear your mind, and imagine these things. Imagine a city littered with death and destruction, buildings ransacked, blown up, or burning to the ground. There is no one of authority to trust, there is no one to save you, your loved ones, your world. A time of great confusion for the living population. What do you hear? Listen. The static hum of electricity unleashed with nowhere to go, gunfire off in the distance, cries of distress and injury, white noise. No longer the calm quiet of normal life, but a post-apocalyptic white noise everywhere you turn. I find that if you think of that on your next play-through of the album it helps. It puts the entire album into perspective, sharpening the focus on what's actually going on in the story. For me it took the music to a whole new level of enjoyment and understanding, a happy marriage of visual and audio arts instead of the slight dissatisfaction I always had prior to reading the book, even after the album had grown on me. So, ye haters of Year of the Black Rainbow, give up the ghost. Try to focus on the story being told, and if you still can't do it then hunt down a copy on vinyl (or a digital vinyl rip) and try it that way, I've found that the vinyl master was mixed a little better. Happy 6th Year of the Black Rainbow, an under appreciated keystone in The Amory Wars saga.

When skeletons live

In the beginning, the universe held nothing but cold, obscure darkness and a longing for something greater than itself. #amreading #YearoftheBlackRainbow #AllThingsCoheed #AmoryWars