New York Sci-Fi rockers Coheed And Cambria drop part three of their Vaxis pentalogy, titled The Father Of Make Believe and continue to raise their sonic bar.
Coheed And Cambria – Vaxis III: The Father Of Make Believe
Release Date: 14 March 2025
Words: Robert Adams
With each release from Coheed And Cambria, I find myself thinking that they cannot do better than this. Then they go and do it again with their new album. The Father Of Make Believe has done exactly that.
I described Vaxis II: A Window Of The Waking Mind as a genre-skipping masterpiece and the best album they have released to date. The same descriptions could be applied to Vaxis III: The Father Of Make Believe.
A soft piano opens Yesterday’s Lost before sumptuous strings make an appearance. A strummed acoustic guitar joins in along with Claudio Sanchez’s gorgeous soft vocals. Father Of Make Believe follows a well-trodden trope that Coheed And Cambria employ to great effect.
A beautifully orchestrated opener before getting into the meat of the album.
Goodbye Sunshine is a pop/rock banger of the highest order and Searching For Tomorrow could have easily been found on Window Of The Waking Mind. The title track, Father Of Make Believe, is a thing of beauty. Josh Eppard’s bass drum sounds like it’s been slapped. Think Ian Paice style, and you will understand.
Eppard works wonders throughout this album, given that his kit is tiny. Just how he manages to create such diverse beats from a kit that size is a miracle.
Sanchez had this to say about the title track: “Throughout my career, I’ve navigated the insecurities of putting my truth out for the world to pick apart and scrutinize. I’ve chosen to keep the struggles of my life private out of respect and love to those people and events that inspired the art. When I can’t express myself in words, I express in worlds.”
There are certainties to be found in every single Coheed And Cambria album and two of those are that the musicianship is always off the scale, and the production is an orgasm for the ears.
Blind Side Sonny has a buzzsaw riff coupled with one of Claudio Sanchez’s more gritty vocal deliveries. It is a proper Tasmanian Devil of a song, and even with it being grittier than course sandpaper, they still throw some “yeah, yeah, yeah’s” into the chorus, and it works.
It seamlessly segues into Play The Poet. This song is the answer to the question, I wonder what Coheed And Cambria would do if they wrote a song in the style of Bring Me The Horizon? There are huge B.M.T.H elements flowing throughout Play The Poet, but, at its core, it is still resolutely Coheed And Cambria.
Corner My Confidence is a beautiful acoustic ballad whose DNA can be traced back to Iron Fist. Someone Who Can is the kind of song that Coheed can write at will. It’s a joyous Summer’s day, roof down, wind in your hair drive of a song. It bounces along with a beat that dares you not to dance.
Coheed And Cambria fans will be delighted to see that the suites have returned on Father Of Make Believe. The Continuum I – IV is introduced by All Mother from The Afterman and concludes the album. Each of the four tracks are as diverse as it gets, yet still retain that definitive Coheed sound.
The last track on the album, The Continuum IV: So It Goes has a breathy whisper of Queen’s Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy wafting across. This is a beautiful ending to a sumptuous album.
What Coheed And Cambria have done with The Father Of Make Believe, is acknowledge their past while keeping their sights set on the future. Die-hard fans will find loads of Easter eggs from previous albums contained within the grooves, but this is the sound of Coheed And Cambria in 2025, and it’s a glorious sound indeed.
Coheed And Cambria – Vaxis III: The Father Of Make Believe is out tomorrow via Virgin Records and is available from here.
