Coheed and Cambria to perform at Macon City Auditorium

The twin guitar harmonies of Iron Maiden. The recurring lyrical themes of Rush. The shape-shifting bombast of Faith No More. Those are just a few of the influences that have helped shape Coheed and Cambria’s musical identity. The progressive rock band is set to perform at the Macon City Auditorium May 25.

As small-town teenagers growing up in Nyack, New York, none of those bands could compare to the outright awesomeness of Led Zeppelin, who at that age transcended pretty much everything there was to be transcended.

“Everybody has that one band, and mine is Led Zeppelin,” said Coheed and Cambria cofounder Josh Eppard, who fell under Led Zeppelin’s spell at the age of 11. 

“There was this 25-year old guy who worked for a Big Brothers type of program, and he’d take us poor kids out to lunch,” Eppard recalled in a recent interview. “And one day he told us, ‘Don’t EVER listen to Led Zeppelin.’ Then he told us how he listened to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backwards and it invoked a demon in his house. And we were just like, ‘Holy sh*t, dude!’ So then, of course, we got my dad’s copy of the album and played ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backwards. And at the point where it’s supposed to say ‘Satan is God,’ I was like ‘Really? What I hear is ‘I love cheeseburgers.’ And I realized that you can make it say anything you want it to be in your mind. But it was still kind of mysterious. Zeppelin had that sort of mystique that we try to carry on in Coheed and Cambria.”

Back in the early days, Coheed and Cambria – which consists of bandleader Claudio Sanchez, guitarist Travis Stever, bassist Zach Cooper and drummer Eppard – were once described as what would happen “if Iron Maiden went emo.” But they’ve covered a whole lot of musical ground over the course of 11 studio albums and more than two decades.

Coheed and Cambria’s “Vaxis Part III: The Father of Make Believe” album, which was released in March 2025, is a case in point. Songs range from the two-and-a-half- minute pedal-to-the-metal “Blind Side Sonny” to the more pop-punk “Someone Who Can.” And then there’s “The Continuum,” a sprawling 20-minute epic in four movements that begins as a really catchy pop song before veering off in enough different musical directions to make prog-influenced bands like Dream Theater jealous.

“It’s one of my favorite tunes on the album,” said Eppard. “The way it starts out as this tender song and then it moves through these parts that are epic, evil, grand and beautiful. When you have such a big catalogue, it’s easy to fall into like ‘Oh, I’ve already done that before.’ So we’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves. And it happens on every record, probably every song.”

All of which can make it that much more challenging to keep track of the songs in their early stages.  

“On every record, the working titles for a lot of the songs are the names of the bands that inspired them. Like “A Favor House Atlantic,” which was one of our biggest songs. The working name for that was “Police,” because it felt very Police. And then there’s a hidden instrumental track we called “2113” as a nod to Rush. We ended up keeping that name for the record.”

There’s more, of course. A lot more.

“I don’t think anyone would say that ‘The Light in the Glass’ actually sounds like “Stairway to Heaven,” but that’s what we called it,” Eppard said. “That whole album [the 2003 sophomore release “Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3”], every song on it had a band that inspired it. And I think that happens to all artists. We’re all fans of music, and music spoke to us. That’s why we dedicated our lives to it.”

When it comes to arranging the songs for live shows, Eppard says the band takes a considerably different approach than it did back in its early days.

“I think as we’ve gotten older – and dare I say, better – we’ve tried to be more faithful to the records,” he said. “And thank God we have gotten better. I just saw a video the other day of us playing in 2001 and I was like, ‘Oh, dear God, we were horrible!’ I think we were playing the song literally twice as fast as it is on the record. But we were kids, and we were excited just being in Baltimore and getting to play there. And I think something spoke to somebody, because it landed for people.”

So while Coheed and Cambria’s aim is truer these days, the band still leaves room for what can make a live show unique, intentionally or not. 

Eppard fondly recalls going to a Radiohead show where one of their songs fell apart and they had to start it all over again.

“For Radiohead to have a song fall apart and then they just start laughing – nobody was mad – it just taught me so much seeing that, and I’m so thankful,” Eppard said. “It was a really profound moment for me to realize that, hey, mistakes maybe should be embraced. We’re all human, and there’s a humanity to playing live. I don’t think us trying to get it close to the record is ever going to sacrifice that humanity.”

Meanwhile, to help keep the mystique alive, the band continues to release deluxe versions of their albums, which include lengthy graphic novels that complement the song lyrics. Sanchez, who began writing them back in the band’s early stages, lists Grant Morrison’s “Batman: Arkham Asylum” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” among his influences.

For Coheed and Cambria fans, those evolving storylines in the lyrics and graphic novels add a world-building dimension that gives them that much more to anticipate.

“It’s almost daily that I run into a fan who has such a passion for the music, which is really inspiring, and it makes me think of myself back when I was 11 years old,” said Eppard, recalling how he would listen to the music while staring at gatefold sleeves and reading the liner notes. “If Led Zeppelin had these other tiers to immerse myself in, I’d be in there hook, line and sinker. Feet first or head first, I’d be jumping in. And I hope that, on our best days, maybe we can be that for somebody.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit maconcentreplex.org/event/coheed-cambria/