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The grinding rockers of Coheed and Cambria are doing everything they can to modernize the stale and reviled genre of progressive metal. Fortunately, the tuneful thrashers are about as far as you can get form bloated 20 minute drum solos, and there is not a single orchestral "movement" to be found on any of their albums. Coheed and Cambria are more interested in telling their story than in boring fans. The Kingston, New York band are in the process of writing a meticulous sci-fi epic, all of which takes place within their albums. It takes a dedicated fan to follow the many plots and characters that reoccur throughout Coheed and Cambria's Amory Wars, and fortunately the band has plenty of those. Loosely, Coheed and Cambria's storyline follows the life of Claudio Kilgannon, a messianic figure who sets off on a quest to conquer Wilhelm Ryan, supreme ruler of the Heaven's Fence universe. As the saga progresses, things take an interesting turn and it's revealed that a new character, The Writer, seems to be authoring the story for an ex-lover and going mad in the process. All of this is based on a series of sci-fi comics that the band's frontman Claudio Sanchez wrote while the band was getting started in the late 1990's. Characters from the story began finding their way into Coheed and Cambria songs, and the themes worked well with the band's unique sound. Caludio Sanchez still works on his comic storyline (a sketchbook was released in 2001) and Coheed and Cambria's music is inextricably linked to the story. In 2002, Coheed and Cambria released their first official full-length studio album The Second Stage Turbine Blade. Both the music and the concept were completely unprecedented in the often formulaic world of metal, and Coheed and Cambria also incorporated surprising elements of funk and synth-pop into their sound. Despite the prog-rock trappings, Coheed and Cambria know their way around a riff, and solid singles like "Blood Red Summer" and "The Suffering" have helped them reach a broad audience.

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