Coheed and Cambria

With the release of Coheed And Cambria's Year Of The Black Rainbow, listeners get another well-orchestrated metal symphony.

The band blends powerful, melodic riffs, driving bass lines, and earth-quaking drums to create murky, atmospheric music.

The album opens with an ominous instrumental that begins at really creepy and descends into extra creepy. This sets up expectations for something massive coming in the next bars of music, and the group delivers. The song quickly shifts gears into a pounding, continuous flow of hard rock that continues through the album.

Songs like "Guns Of Summer" and "Here We Are Juggernaut" especially stand out. The group is famous for grand and often complex metal, and these songs are prime examples. There are very few moments in these songs where the guitarist is not pounding out some kind of intense riff that would break a beginning player's fingers.

The album keeps an upbeat tempo for the most part. The majority of the songs are fast-paced, allowing only two or three slower songs on the 12-track album. These songs blend in well, except for the slow-paced, drab, and out of place "Far." The CD closes the same way as it opens—with the same foreboding, atmospheric instrumental music, giving the listener a sense of unsettling closure.