Live Review : Coheed and Cambria + And So I Watch You From Afar @ Academy, Manchester on October 20th 2025

Coheed and Cambria have always been a very interesting and difficult-to-pigeonhole proposition. But when you get down to it, they are essentially classic rock for hipsters. Their sound is slick, immaculately produced and eminently sing-alongable to. What elevates them, though from being yet another band with catchy choruses and melodic hooks is the intellect and concepts behind their material. Every track is part of a massive, multifaceted, fantastical tale. They are not just singing about someone who may or may not fancy the pants off somebody else, they are participating in an incredible feat of world-building that speaks to the nerd in all of us. It is that additionality golden thread narrative that means Coheed fans are a fanatical bunch drawn together by an overriding desire to join the dots of all the lyrical easter eggs.

The much-loved British progressive institution Haken had been tonight's support of choice, however, it seems that life had got in the way, and they unceremoniously removed themselves from this tour a couple of weeks back. There is therefore a slight level of confusion in the room when Northern Irish Post Rockers And So I watch You From Afar, wander on in their place. Post-rock is usually an intricate and restrained reserve. It operates in a cacophony of complex passages and elaborate instrumentation. And So I watch You From Afar take a very different approach to the genre. There is a jazz-like and even Afrobeat component to be found in their music. There are plenty of times where it feels like we are listening to Vampire Weekend go prog. It is post-rock in the fact that it is deconstructing and reinterpreting a defined musical blueprint, but it is doing it in a very different and less minimalistic fashion. There is a bass-driven funkiness that gives the whole thing a danceability quintessentially alien to the genre (Mogwai may be one of the greatest bands on earth, but you will never shake your tush to them). For a hastily inaugurated replacement they are received inordinately well. There is an intelligent and nonconformist air about them that just appeals to the Coheed And Cambria massive, and if the Academy had aisles, the audience would be dancing in them. A highly enjoyable reinvention of genre. 

During their set And So I watch You From Afar talk about the close bond between band and fan that characterises the Coheed family. There are quite simply no passengers here tonight. You are either a dedicated fan boy or girl that knows every word of every song, or you just aren’t here. There is an astonishing feeling of ownership and oneness. Many of those present aren't the usual metal crowd but somehow, they feel drawn into the gravitational pull of this band. The unassailable intellectual undertone talks to their fans in a highly unique way that you simply don’t get with other acts. They are astonishingly tight and highly polished tonight. They speak of this being the tail end of a tour (the mantra third show from the end is continually repeated), but there is no sign of road weariness and cabin fever. Instead, the reverential reception engorges and energises them. The continual waves of love push the band further and harder, and we end up in a perpetual circle where the more the audience shows their euphoric adulation, the better the band plays and so forth and so on.

From the stage it is declared that we are here tonight to celebrate the recently released “Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe” (Coheed And Cambria don’t do short album titles) and they visit their newborn on six occasions. In other forums, material from an eleventh album would at best illicit a polite response and at worse lead to a mass exodus to the bar and toilets. But this is Coheed Land, and they do things differently here. Every single song from the new album is treated like it is their greatest hit. Opener ‘Goodbye, Sunshine’ is sung along to with such zeal and passion that anyone unfamiliar with the band and its dedicated fanbase would swear that it was their big number. Spotify may well mean that everyone now has access to everything, but that doesn't stop it from being extraordinary that there are no down moments this evening. No track elicits a weak or muted response. Every song is sung along with as though it is the closing number. All of this means when they do get to the really well-known stuff, the Academy's corrugated roof is metaphorically blown to smithereens. ‘Everything Evil’ from their debut album is no stranger, having been, in and out and in again of their set lists since 2001, but it is greeted tonight as the prodigal son that has returned with the keys to the beer cupboard. The roar it elicits is astonishing. The same level of euphoric candour is unleashed when ‘The Suffering’ from the breakout “Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes Of Madness” is unveiled (told you about those titles) and Claudio’s vocals are drowned out by the evensong choir of willing participants. 

To the uninitiated it is simultaneously very difficult and incredibly easy to describe how Coheed sound. It is a mixture of eighties Yes and seventies Journey. Big, anthemic and deliciously melodic. But it is enhanced by a complexity and cerebral core that is astonishingly textured and multilayered. Nothing illustrates this more than “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3” lavish title track. It doesn’t just act as a main set finale; is a central cornerstone that the entire show is built around. It is mammoth in both its scale and its ambition. It is pure accessible metal in its repeatable refrains and crisp, catchy riffs and it is death-defying in the way that it keeps on building. Even when you think you've reached its crescendo, it suddenly builds up another few notches. This evening, it is massively elongated. Split in half to accommodate a sprawling 15-minute-plus instrumental jam. This is where Coheed And Cambria go freeform on our bottoms. Whether it is all meticulously rehearsed or not, it feels improvised and instinctively spontaneous. Claudio has his Jimi Hendrix moment, playing the guitar with his teeth, whilst the others drift off on spacial musical journeys of discovery.

The encore is made up of not one but two tracks from the new album but as we keep stating the reception would make you think these are anything but songs released this year. We then get to ‘Welcome Home’ and Claudio doesn’t even bother trying to sing. The Academy choir does the job for him and he lets them undertake the heavy lifting. The whole show has felt like some evangelical act of worship, but with this final track, it reaches a transcendental peak. Outside of Beatlemania and the short-lived timespan of boy bands, it is impossible to witness this level of furious devotion, but here it is within our world. Coheed And Cambria have become a band that matters to people because they have never compromised and they have never wavered from their creative uniqueness. By not fitting neatly anywhere, they have managed to amass a following of those who also feel they do not align with a singular tribe. This evening was about a union between musical misfits and those devoted to them. It beautifully illustrated that sense of belonging that music gives the disenfranchised and the unconnected. An astonishing evening.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Coheed And Cambria +  And So I Watch You From Afar