Coheed and Cambria

Coheed and Cambria's "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" is a textbook example of a band's reach exceeding it's grasp. The band must be lauded for attempting to add something new to the emo genre, but their new album makes it painfully clear that they just don't have the ability to do it. At least not at this point in their career, that is.

It comes down to this: C&C is an immature band trying way too hard to be mature, and the only result is an inauthentic and insincere album filled with strange juxtapositions and anomalies.

In certain songs the band takes itself way too seriously while in others it doesn't take itself seriously enough. The title track is an eight minute epic, in which frontman Claudio Sanchez sings, "Man your own jackhammers/man your battlestations/we'll have you dead pretty soon."

Many of the album's songs feature such morbid imagery, while others are generic pop songs. "Blood Red Summer" features a bridge of bubblegum "whoa's," and "The Camper Velourium 1: Faint of Heart" features a background vocal chant of "Koo-koo-ka-choo!"

It's fairly obvious that C&C is a band wrought with an identity crisis: they're a bunch of emo boys trying to suppress their natural tendencies and break out of the mold. Only problem is, they're so entrenched in it that even when they try, their true selves show through.

It doesn't help that the band's arrangements contain a lot of filler. Even the title track, which happens to be the album's best, could easily have been cut down by at least two minutes. Seriously, guys . . . just because you come up with a cool guitar line doesn't mean you need to need to force it into the song.

Half of the art of pop songwriting is determining which parts add to the song's power and which detract. Seemingly, though, this is an idea that has passed under C&C's collective radar.

Sanchez' voice is akin to a higher version of Alien Ant Farm's Dryden Mitchell, but slightly more annoying. His lyrics seem forced, and while they may be more poetic than most, his immaturity still shines through. The guitar work of Sanchez and Travis Stever is mostly overly dramatic and out of place.

Unfortunately, neither the guitars nor the drums are big enough to create the kind of sound the band was going for. The album could have benefited from a few more guitar tracks on each song and much louder percussion. As it is, the drums sound lifeless and boring. Whether this is due to production or drummer Joshua Eppard's abilities is unclear.

Simply put, C&C is trying too hard to be artsy and sophisticated when at their core they're just another emo band. That's not to say, though, that they don't have potential. If they had written this album five or so years down the line, perhaps their vision could have been realized. As it is, though, "Silent Earth: 3" just kind of sucks.