Coheed and Cambria - “Time Consumer”

Pain is only a pulse, if you just stop feeling it

My older step-brother Joshua and I were never best mates, but from the time our two splintered families came together in 2002 I always had a strong affection for him, and what little we had in common day-to-day was more than made up for by our mutual musical interests. The amount of bands that we exposed each other to made up for a large portion of my early high-school obsessions, and laid the groundwork for the kinds of music I occupy most of my time listening to and thinking about now.

We were also both “gamers”, which I put in inverted commas because, ugh that term, but I bring this up is because he often listened to the new music he had downloaded or bought while playing X-Box. The day he first burned Second Stage Turbine Blade onto a disc and listened as he drove some car around some racetrack on our living-room television, I happened to be sitting reading in another room. Halfway through “Time Consumer”, I realised I was no longer paying attention to my book, but was instead transfixed by the music. I walked into the living-room and asked “What IS this?”.

He paused the game. “Coheed and Cambria”, turned to look at me, smiled, and without waiting for my reply said: “I know”.

Joshua now has a Coheed and Cambria tattoo.

That was in 2003, the year after Second Stage Turbine Blade came out and also the year that Coheed released the follow-up, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (Don’t worry about those cumbersome album titles, I’ll mostly be sticking to acronyms this week). It took about 12 months to become a real Coheed-head, but even during this first exposure to the band I was experiencing something beautiful and strange and perfect to me. “Time Consumer” remains a highlight in the bands discography, for more than just nostalgic reasons – the chorus hook is still a triumph, as are the verses which are some of the catchiest on the album. The instrumental intro and then it’s reprisal before the final chorus is a fantastic dynamic shift, plus the guitar solo from Bad Brains guitarist Dr. Know adds a lot of personality and flavour, and his inclusion in the song hints at Coheed’s punkier roots. It’s a striking opening track, a bold statement of intent.

In fact I feel like this song is so representative of the band, or at least their early material, that if you’re listening to it and finding nothing appealing about it at all, there’s a good chance you’ll find little to like in the next few days.

Though obviously I’m going to do my best to prove that hunch otherwise.