Coheed And Cambria mainman Claudio Sanchez has revealed the legal nightmare his family faced when their home was turned into a cannabis farm.

And he’s explained how the experience partly inspired his decision to make the band’s next album, The Color Before The Sun, their first-ever non-concept release.

He and wife Chondra Echert had rented their country house out while they tried living in other parts of the world. But they were taken by surprise last year when they decided to move back in as they prepared for the arrival of son Atlas.

Sanchez tells Prog’s Natasha Scharf: “In anticipating his birth we were contemplating moving back to the country house. It was time for us to do the yearly inspection but it kept getting put off.

“My wife got a text from the renters, saying the house had been broken into. We thought it was odd so we called the police. They said no one had been living in the house – but they suspected it had been turned into a cannabis farm.

“There was no real evidence aside from the smell and the residue, but they thought it was a $300,000-a-month operation.”

The situation led to “a scary time” in the run-up to Atlas’ birth. Sanchez says: “We had to be sequestered because they thought we may have been involved.”

The drama took place after Coheed And Cambria had completed their Afterman series of albums, which continued Sanchez’s Amory Wars storyline. Eighth release The Color Before The Sun is their first to be created without an underlying plot.

The mainman says: “I was having a hard time honing in on the conceptual writing. I was starting to write more personally. I started to ponder the idea of releasing it as a solo record because it didn’t fall into the confines of a Coheed record.”

He continues: “The anticipation of being a father spilled into the songwriting, and I didn’t want to cloud that with a blanket of fiction.”

He became even more determined once the family had moved back into their home. “It was a really important time in my life and I thought, ‘If I’m going to express myself as honestly as possible, now would be the time to do it.’”

The Color Before The Sun arrives on October 9. Coheed And Cambria play the UK’s Hevy Fest on August 14 among a run of European and North American dates.