In 2022, progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria released their tenth album Vaxis Act II: The Window of the Waking Mind. The album quickly hit hard for me both musically and thematically. That album was a turning point in my life and in listening to it I was reminded that 2003 was far in my rearview. I was no longer an angsty 19 year old who was fresh out of high school. I was no longer half asleep and scribbling the Keywork logo in my notebook during Sociology lectures in community college. I am now experiencing Coheed and Cambria’s music (as well as the albums’ storylines known as The Amory Wars) as a full-grown adult taking care of two kids with my partner. I no longer identified with the character Claudio Kilgannon, a boy who seemed to stumble his way into his full potential albeit vehemently resisting it the entire time. I now identify more with recent characters like Nia Worn and Nostrand Crane as a parent trying to survive a harsh world and raising beautiful neurodivergent children.

The pandemic, for better or for worse, changed a lot of my perspectives and reorganized my priorities. Not having the financial freedom to access every new merch item helped me to recontextualize Coheed as a band and, dare I say, an intellectual property. I didn’t care as much about the cool box sets or comics. Since the start of Vaxis: Act I I got to rediscover that it was the music first and foremost that drew me into this band and the universe surrounding it. It was their music that lead me to find so many amazing and like-minded individuals like many of you I have befriended on numerous social media sites. One of those people is the woman I love and want to spend the rest of my life with not to mention her children I am now honored to be raising.

Like I said, I’m not a kid anymore. I fully understand that in this day and age, making a living solely off of art and passion may not necessarily pay the bills or put food on our tables. The people who make the art in which we experience aren’t always millionaires and might have to make some compromises that might be a bit uncomfortable to make ends meet. It seemed like a fair trade: The band provides cool stuff to buy and we in turn get to experience cool music and the occasional collectible. The beauty of Coheed and Cambria as a band as well as a concept is that you have several entry points: You can just listen to the music on streaming services or physical media. You can go see them on tour if they’re playing at a concert venue near you. If you want to know more about the storyline embedded within the songs you can read comic books or prose novels. There’s t-shirts, box sets and so on.

I was, for a very long time, a strong supporter of the notion that nobody is forced to buy into anything if they’re just into the band. And that is still very much true. You can just start and stop at “These songs are pretty good” and never venture past that. And that’d be fine. I never liked this thing that was becoming increasingly more apparent to me where those entry points into the fandom became a means of gatekeeping. I didn’t like the idea that if you didn’t know all there was to know about The Ghansgraad or the significance of the dragonfly logo than you perhaps weren’t a true fan of Coheed. If I at any point fed into this mindset I profusely apologize. Perhaps that comes a bit too late from me for some of you, but that is the truth.

The Vaxis era of albums have been among some of my favorites, but it’s been increasingly difficult to separate the love of Coheed as simply a band that plays music I enjoy to that of Coheed as a brand. I ignored a lot of the discourse around the S.S. Neverender cruise ship events save a few discussions with close friends off social media. I tried my best to keep it to the music side of things as best I could. Fan engagement has been sparse these past couple years since the Vaxis: Act II album cycle ended. I found myself feeling rather apathetic about the announcement of another cruise and the release of the first new single “Blind Side Sonny.” The vision of this skeletal figure wearing a helment with LED dollar signs for eyes was an image that was far too damning for me to ignore.

While I’m sure the character serves as a crucial element to the lore of the storylines, it felt too symbolic of Coheed the brand demanding more than I was personally comfortable with giving. It felt ethically gross. That image of Blind Side Sonny with the LED dollar sign eyes was burned in my mind. This is now the face of this band (and brand) for me. Most bands will make music, sell said music and attempt to sell shirts, stickers, etc. to continue to fund their art and make a living. However, that specific barrier of entry became too large for me to be ok with on a personal level.

As of this writing, Coheed’s eleventh studio album Vaxis Act III: The Father of Make Believe was officially announced. I was excited to see the new album artwork by Chase Stone, who has been absolutely crushing it in that regard. I was interesting in seeing the album art and I was surprised to find that the band dropped a new single “Searching For Tomorrow” on YouTube. All of that was somewhat obscured by the fact that the first image on the official website is that of pre-order information for the nearly $200 deluxe box set.

I’m not the first to make such comments when it came to the somewhat prohibitive nature of these big merch drops, and I won’t be the last. Again, I am not judging people for making any purchase of this set or other merchandise. My point—if I’m making any at all—is that I’m becoming increasingly less excited about the fact that the music, the very thing that drew me to this band in the first place, is becoming something of an afterthought. This fanbase is known for an almost genius-level love of deep dives and lowkey detective work, scrounging for any and all breadcrumbs of information, but I felt the new single, artwork and track listing were somewhat buried under another thing to buy.

Diminished is the joy (and sadness lol) of listening to stories of intergalactic misfists battling to the death. Mostly gone is that sense of community I once felt where we bonded over analyzing story elements or discussing our favorite songs. I’m sure that there are small pockets that I may be missing, but it no longer feels like we are truly “One Among The Fence.” These days it feels like whenever Coheed announces anything the first item I need to grab is my wallet instead of my earbuds.

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