Author: smngrx01

Slaughter To Prevail frontman Alex Terrible has adopted two baby bears.

The Russian musician has taken to Instagram and TikTok to share that he is now looking after a pair of cubs, named Kodi and Harley, and is hoping to raise money for their care through merchandise.

In a series of videos, Terrible can be seen babysitting the animals, from helping one climb a tree, to giving them adorable cuddles whilst they suckle on his nose. In another video, the two cubs chase after the vocalist before falling into his chest in a giant fluffy cuddle puddle, and it is seriously cute stuff.

Explaining the story behind the adoption, Terrible says in a social media post: “Long story short. My neighbor @kirillpotapov ( literally 10 mins away from me) saved 2 babies bears Kodi and Harley.

“He helps animals for long time and I want to help him. From this moment I will visit this babies every time Im at home in Russia and help them financially.”

He continues, “And I want to ask you guys for help as well. I will not just ask you for money and shit abut I will drop some merch with this lil cutie pies and you will buy it. All money will go to them. Stay brutal.”

In previous years, Terrible has made headlines for riding bears, and even wrestling them. Speaking of his unusual hobby in a new Metal Hammer feature, he says: “When you look into a human’s eyes, you feel emotions, you feel maybe anger or kindness. You feel this soul, right? You look into this bear’s eyes, you don’t see anything in there.”

Last month, Slaughter To Prevail became part of Metal Hammer’s New Heavy Class Of 2025, a cover series celebrating the most exciting rising bands in metal right now. You can pick up the Slaughter To Prevail cover issue alongside an exclusive t-shirt with – you guessed it – a bear on the front, via Metal Hammer’s online store.

Slaughter To Prevail are expected to release a new album this year, and have confirmed it has the bear-themed title, Grizzly.

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Liz works on keeping the Louder sites up to date with the latest news from the world of rock and metal. Prior to joining Louder as a full time staff writer, she completed a Diploma with the National Council for the Training of Journalists and received a First Class Honours Degree in Popular Music Journalism. She enjoys writing about anything from neo-glam rock to stoner, doom and progressive metal, and loves celebrating women in music.

There’s a pink-finned, double-horned mermaid in the lift. To most people, that might seem a bit strange, but not to Electric Callboy. In the video for the Germans’ single Elevator Operator, vocalists Kevin Ratajczak and Nico Sallach, both dressed in wigs and the kind of trainers your dad puts on to clean the garage, take a ride up and down a magic lift shaft, with surprises on every floor (kittens! A fire! A nightclub that looks like something out of Blade minus the blood and vampires!).

The warp-speed journey is commandeered by a mythical, moustached man dressed in a white fur coat and silver skin-tight trousers. Packed with WTF?! moments, not least ambient elevator music infiltrating a breakdown, the song is everything we’ve come to expect from the most fun band to hit the metal scene in years.

The video concept, Nico and Kevin tell us, was inspired by a real person, the genuine elevator operator at the House Of Blues in Chicago, where the band once played a gig.

“I was just asking, ‘Hey, what’s your job?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I’m the elevator operator,’ recalls Nico. “And the funny thing was that he was playing techno music, not typical elevator music. I stepped out of the elevator with Kevin, we took a look at each other, and I could see in his eyes he had the same idea… ‘That should be a song!’”

Wonderfully weird and wacky music videos have become Electric Callboy’s calling card, and it’s a strategy that’s worked: Elevator Operator clocked up more than one million views on YouTube in its first 24 hours. Previous clips have seen them perform choreography in satin shirts to reworked 00s trance, pump weights in 80s spandex, and mosh in space with Elvis-style quiffs. As funny as they are, it’s led to some critics pigeonholing the band as a novelty.

“There is a big difference between being funny and being ridiculous,” insists Nico.

“It has been a burden to be in a funny band and therefore not be taken seriously as a musician,” agrees Kevin, referencing their trademark metalcore-meets-EDM. “I have struggled with that during my many years of being in Electric Callboy, and I think I speak for every member in the band, but at some point, it changed. People finally saw that even if it’s funny music, it’s well made, that we invested time and passion in it.”

And these days, the band can afford to let their imaginations run wild. “We always had ideas, but the question was, ‘How pricey is the video shoot?’” says Kevin. “Like, ‘We need fire… I have a lighter and maybe you can make it bigger?’ Now it’s, ‘Give me all your pyro!’”

The budget isn’t the only thing that’s blown up. Last year, Electric Callboy reached 10 million listeners on Spotify. They’ve founded their own event, Escalation Fest, in Oberhausen, Germany. Meanwhile, fans and industry insiders have talked about them as future Download Festival headliners, in the same breath as Bad Omens and Spiritbox.

Ever since Nico joined as co-vocalist in 2020, replacing previous singer Sebastian ‘Sushi’ Biesler, and they released viral single Hypa Hypa – sparking a killer run of genre-bending bangers, and 2022 album Tekkno – Electric Callboy have been caught in a whirlwind that’s seen them become one of the most beloved bands in modern metal.

“I missed the moment when it happened, actually,” muses Kevin. “It’s like when you’re not satisfied with your body, you go to the gym, and you lift weights. You get fitter and fitter, and there’s one moment that you get out of the shower standing in front of the mirror and you say, ‘Damn, I’m jacked!’”

They can, however, pinpoint when they realised something Really Big was starting to happen. For Nico, it was the band’s set in front of a gigantic crowd at Nova Rock Festival 2022.

“It was so overwhelming,” he recalls. Like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. OK cool, calm down, everything’s fine, man.’”

For Kevin, it was March 2023, as the band prepared to play the Lotto Arena in Merksem, Belgium. “It was where we hung our LED walls and the whole production was in place for the very first time,” he says. “There were nearly a hundred people, busy driving forklifts. I remembered all the times I’d carried my own keyboards onstage, and I’m like, ‘This is all happening because we are making music tonight.’”

The band are still learning to navigate that new reality. These days, they get recognised more frequently in public. It’s something that Kevin, one of the most down-to-earth dudes you could wish to meet, could do without.

“When I meet my friends, for example I go to the gymnastics with my kids, there are other dads and it happens that they know my band,” he explains. “All of a sudden, they’re like, ‘Wow, you’re here!’ I don’t want it, because it takes away that natural conversation with people. I want to blend in, you know?”

Anyone who has been to an Electric Callboy gig will vouch that they’re one of the best live bands out there. Their half mosh/half raves are a riot of colour, fireworks and costume changes that resemble a hardcore, two-hour workout every night – this is something that’s not lost on Kevin, who turns 40 this year.

“When I was 29, the second I turned 30, I got the feeling my is body was aching more,” he jokes. “I need a little bit more of going to the gym right now, but I honestly feel great onstage.”

Still, a lot less partying goes on these days. Today, Kevin and Nico are taking time out from family duties to dial into our interview from their respective homes in Germany. Both are married, and Kevin has two kids, while Nico has his second on the way.

“The older as we get, the more boring it gets,” Kevin laughs. “Ten years ago, I could have told you about, like, naked hangouts in the bus, but now it’s like, ‘Yeah, there was this one time I rolled over on my sofa in the green room, from left to right… crazy story.”

Still, the creativity and pure, unadulterated fun that comes with being in a band like Electric Callboy certainly has its benefits.

“When I look at people at my age that I went to school with, or that live in my neighbourhood, they look so fucking old,” says Nico. “I think the band keeps us young.”

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All of this could have easily gone a different way. Back in 2020, before Nico joined, the band – then known under their original name, Eskimo Callboy – came close to calling it quits. After forming in the small German town of Castrop-Rauxel in 2010, they released five albums of fairly bog-standard, juvenile metalcore with previous singer Sushi, none of which made much of a dent on the scene.

Within the band, all was not well. By the time they went into the studio to record 2019’s Rehab, their final album with Sushi, relationships within the band had disintegrated to breaking point.

“Although we worked on one project, it was always a compromise,” remembers Kevin, who describes that period as “the worst time of my musical career”. “It was like when in a relationship two people go separate ways. It’s not a question about who is right or wrong, it’s just it didn’t work. It was toxic in the end.”

“I’ve almost forgotten the songs on Rehab,” he says. “Every single day I woke up to write that album, I’d have rather stayed at home. I didn’t even want to make music anymore. We did our music, we did our vocals, we shot some videos, but it was heartless, and it had no soul.”

When Sushi left in 2020, it was like a switch had been flipped. Almost immediately, the band found themselves written off by their label and industry colleagues.

“Everyone around us was like, ‘Oh, yeah, you have a contract, but could you please tell us first what you’re going to do, and could you show us some songs…”

Things weren’t gloomy for long, though. In 2020, Nico joined the band, auditioning with a video of himself singing EC song Prism (you can watch it on YouTube). A few months later, having recognised that their original name was problematic – a slur against the Inuit community – the band changed it to Electric Callboy and never looked back.

Now, the band view Nico’s arrival and the single Hypa Hypa as the true beginning of the band. Relationships are tight, based on honesty, respect and friendship.

“Each of us has the possibility to give his output and everybody gives it a chance,” smiles Nico. “Over the past five years, no single day has ever felt like work.”

Despite how big things have become, Electric Callboy are very much an in-house operation. The band gather around the huge table in their studio to brainstorm every move they make, with their videos handled through guitarist Pascal Schillo’s own production company, Schillobros.

It’s the reason everything they do feels authentic and packed with personality. That was never more obvious than with Ratatata, the band’s ludicrously fun 2024 collab with Japanese superstars Babymetal, which Metal Hammer readers voted song of the year.

With its delicious earworm melodies, buzzing EDM and juddering guitars, it was a hefty dose of pure joy, a perfect smash of West-meets-East bedlam that’s been played more than 35 million times on YouTube and 63 million times on Spotify. The video sees Nico and Kevin barging through walls like a two-men wrecking machine wearing disco ball helmets… because why not? While Su-Metal, Moametal and Momometal drink cocktails in a Tokyo karaoke room, like a typical girls’ night out. It’s easily the most relaxed we’ve seen Babymetal, a rare moment they seemed to let their guards down and their personalities shine through.

“We wondered, ‘Are we going to see them between the shots?’” says Kevin, who didn’t know what to expect when the two bands met up to make the video. “But it was a great time whenever we saw each other. We talked, they’re just good girls.”

“They were into it the second we asked them,” recalls Nico of the shoot’s general goofiness. “We didn’t have to play any cards to make them do it.”

The track itself was written online, sharing audio files and ideas over a long back-and-forth. “Normally when we finish a song, we have, like, six or seven versions,” explains Kevin. “In the end with Ratatata it was version 21, 22 or something.”

Both bands brought something to the table. “There were things, for example Babymetal’s ‘Fu! Fu!’s, that we didn’t like at all,” says Nico. “But they told us it is something they use in the karaoke scene, and that’s so typically Japanese that we said, ‘OK, it would be a bad decision not to try it.’ We met straight in the middle. Now, I can’t think of the song without the ‘Fu! Fu!’s anymore.”

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Elevator Operator is the first single from Electric Callboy’s upcoming, unnamed seventh album. It’s one of two songs recorded so far, which Nico states “could not be more different”. For the rest of the album, though, it looks like there’ll be a wait.

A relentless touring schedule over the last two and half years means there’s been a delay in recording it, and although Kevin and Nico are staying tight-lipped, they can give us an idea of what to expect…

“We don’t want to do a second Tekkno, but we want to keep up the vibe,” says Kevin. “We have some songs that are pretty similar to some Tekkno songs. On the other side, there are things we tried out in small parts on Tekkno, that we liked that much, we’re now trying to do whole songs out of them.”

“One of the coolest things about being a member of Electric Callboy is the freedom in writing new music,” adds Nico. “There are no boundaries. We can do whatever we want. Even if we drop a Schlager song, which we did [with 2022’s Hurrikan], people are not pointing their fingers at us and telling us that we are not Electric Callboy anymore. This is actually what the people expect – the unexpected.”

Meanwhile, 2025 looks to be their biggest year yet. In May, they will play their first UK festival headline slot, at Slam Dunk, and in November they will play their biggest UK gig yet, at London’s iconic Alexandra Palace, as part of a European tour that includes several 15,000- to 17,000- capacity arenas in Germany.

We note that Ally Pally tends to be the final stop before bands make the leap to arenas. It’s a far cry from the early days of the band, where they lost more money touring here than they made, but it’s all part of their new reality. Right now, it seems nothing can stop their onward march. Whatever fate throws at them, Electric Callboy are ready.

“It’s crazy that we’ve reached that kind of level, and I just can’t imagine there is another step,” says Nico. “I’m happy with what I have right now. Sure, we have to think big, but there’s nothing bigger I can imagine than an arena. I can’t imagine playing a stadium, or anything like that. I want to dream of it, and if it happens, I’ll pinch myself.”

Electric Callboy headline Slam Dunk in the UK next month. They play London’s Alexandra Palace on November 11. Order your exclusive Electric Callboy shirt & magazine bundle online now.

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Danniii Leivers writes for Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog, The Guardian, NME, Alternative Press, Rock Sound, The Line Of Best Fit and more. She loves the 90s, and is happy where the sea is bluest.

Compared to many other years in the heavy metal history books, 2005 was disproportionately stacked with top-shelf releases. Opeth’s Ghost Reveries, Trivium’s Ascendancy, Bullet For My Valentine’s The Poison and Avenged Sevenfold’s City Of Evil are just the tip of the iceberg when you’re listing the excellent albums that dropped 20 years back. However, with so much mainstream-baiting riffery coming out, that inevitably means some quality getting cast to the wayside.

Below, Metal Hammer has delved beneath the top of the pile and found the 2005 metal albums that should have stood out more. Whether you love prog, deathcore or even nu metal, there’s probably something in this pile that will whet your appetite. Prepare to scratch your head over these bands’ not-chart-topping status as much as we do.

Cave In – Perfect Pitch Black

Cave In’s greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. Across their 30-year career, the New Englanders have refused to settle in one genre for more than one album at a time, exciting their ardent fans but meaning they never found a ‘scene’ to call home. Case in point: the fiercely underrated Perfect Pitch Black.

Released after their controversial radio rock dalliance Antenna, the band’s fourth album shifted to a sludge/metalcore gear that perplexed new converts, many of whom had just seen them tour supporting Foo Fighters. At the same time, its low-key release via indie label Hydra Head meant a lot of dejected metalheads didn’t get the chance to come back. Taken on its own merits, though, Perfect… was a wonderfully schizophrenic zig-zag between might and melody, worthy of far, far better than it received.

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Chimaira – Chimaira

Chimaira claim they invented the phrase ‘New Wave Of American Heavy Metal’, having stuck it on the back of a t-shirt in 2002. Whether they did or didn’t coin the catch-all for the movement that hurried nu metal onto its life-support machine, what’s undisputed is that they were one of its unsung vanguards. 2003’s The Impossibility Of Reason combined thrash, hardcore and groove metal into an all-adrenaline cocktail that affirmed the changing of heavy music’s guard, even if the sales it drummed up weren’t magnificent.

Commercially, this self-titled follow-up leapt off the back of its predecessor but still didn’t get as high as deserved, reaching number 74 on the US charts. Nonetheless, the brash likes of Salvation and Left For Dead should be shouted about, flaunting more melodic nuance than anything the band had done before without sacrificing their guttural force.

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Dark Tranquillity – Character

Conventional wisdom is that the heyday of melodeath was the 1990s, and many, many albums back that standpoint up. Carcass’ Heartwork, Death’s Symbolic, In Flames’ The Jester Race, At The Gates’ Slaughter Of The Soul and others reshaped the metal landscape as quickly and violently as a nuclear bomb. Dark Tranquillity were part of this seismic wave thanks to 1995 standout The Gallery, but the Gothenburg bunch were still nowhere near their peak.

Where other melodeath frontrunners changed genre or split up, Mikael Stanne and co. stayed the course. After incorporating some gothic atmosphere on 1999’s Projector, they entered a golden age with the ferocious yet catchy Damage Done, then continued apace with Character. Unfortunately, album seven’s songs wowed fans but didn’t rock metal’s mainstream, next-generation aggressors like Killswitch Engage having already taken over.

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Despised Icon – The Healing Process

If you ask most metalheads which albums launched deathcore, they’ll most likely call you a poser and spit in your face. If you ask others, they’ll say Job For A Cowboy’s Doom started it and Suicide Silence’s The Cleansing popularised it. However, there needs to be space in that conversation for Despised Icon.

On their 2002 debut album Consumed By Your Poison, the Canadians began to imbue brutal death metal with something… simpler. After signing with Century Media, they got even more to-the-point, loading The Healing Process with the ball-busting breakdowns and squealing pinch harmonics of early metalcore. It’s a sound that came to define the North American metal scene in the late 2000s, but Healing… didn’t chart in any territory and these progenitors remain underground darlings, suggesting they were too ahead of the curve for their own good. What a shame.

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God Forbid – IV: Constitution Of Treason

Like the above-mentioned Chimaira, God Forbid were New Wave Of American Heavy Metal fixtures worthy of becoming superstars. Playing an all-adrenaline fusion of metalcore, melodeath, groove metal and thrash, the New Jerseyans started off well, inking a deal with major label Century Media ahead of 2001 album Determination. They then toured with Lamb Of God and Shadows Fall before securing a slot on Ozzfest.

Why IV: Constitution Of Treason didn’t blow the doors off modern metal remains a mystery, then. It may have been a concept album – telling the story of an apocalypse, a society that rises from the ashes, and another apocalypse – but there was no proggy fannying about. Instead, these were 10 laser-focussed, pulse-pounding tracks, and each one screamed that God Forbid should have been revered in the 21st century’s heavy metal landscape.

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Hate Eternal – I, Monarch

There’s a contradiction at the heart of Hate Eternal. Their songs consist of singer/guitarist/founder Erik Rutan laying down the most primal, caveman-level riffs he possibly can, yet they’re framed by nonstop, noisy and madly technical drum patterns. Third album I, Monarch – which has Derek Roddy of Nile, Malevolent Creation and Today Is The Day fame raging behind the kit – is possibly the best display of that brutal contrast.

Behold Judas, a whirlwind of tech-death that never gets too intricate for its own good, and the title track are among the standout songs from the band’s career. Yet, for whatever reason, they rarely get hoisted among the death metal elite. Is it because they started when the Florida scene was past its peak? Or perhaps it’s because Rutan joining and producing Cannibal Corpse slowed their momentum? Either way, this maelstrom of ugliness needs to barrage more ears.

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Karnivool – Themata

If nu metal started fading away in the early 2000s, then Karnivool were its dying gasp. The Australians were arguably the last visionary band to form during the genre’s heyday, their debut Themata taking just as much from prog and alt-metal as it did from Korn and Deftones. That mix resulted in unique anthems like the title track, which layered technical lead guitar lines on top of a swaggering rhythm section.

The album was something of a regional hit, reaching number 41 on the charts down under, and the band amassed an international fanbase as they gradually shed their nu metal skin. Still, with the melodic craft and innovation present throughout Themata, Karnivool should have become fast arena stars. Only now, with a headline slot at the UK’s 10,000-capacity Arctangent festival set for this summer, do they seem to finally be getting their rightful flowers.

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Nevermore – This Godless Endeavor

Nevermore are frequently described as one of the most underrated US metal bands ever, and correctly so. Having formed in Seattle at the height of the city’s love affair with grunge, their career was always going to be an uphill battle, made harder by their refusal to neatly fit into one subgenre. On such excellent albums as This Godless Endeavor, the quartet condensed prog, power metal and thrash into one exciting package that reaped cult acclaim.

After Godless…, Nevermore toured with heavy metal heroes as wide-ranging as Megadeth, Disturbed and In Flames, but still never found their ‘scene’. A follow-up album, The Obsidian Conspiracy, took five years to materialise and charted at a meagre 132 in America, then founding singer Warrel Dane passed away in 2017. With any luck, the reunion slated to take place this year will earn this band some of the recognition they were robbed of first time round.

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Soilwork – Stabbing The Drama

They don’t get mentioned as frequently as In Flames, At The Gates and Dark Tranquillity, but Soilwork are another gang of melodeath masters without which the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal would not have taken shape. Initially lightning fast with razor-sharp guitars, the Helsingborg boys adapted to the 2000s using hellish grooves and radio-baiting singalongs. And both those things strike at full power on Stabbing The Drama.

Where many a fan would point to Stabbing… as Soilwork’s master-stroke (the title track and fellow single Nerve being exhibits A and B in their case), it didn’t strike the same chord with outside ears. It reached number 52 on the German album charts but that’s it, possibly a result of such students as Killswitch Engage and All That Remains growing into their own and saturating the market.

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Thrice – Vheissu

Vheissu is what happens when hardcore kids escape captivity. Through the early 2000s, Thrice became leaders of the post-hardcore movement, delivering angsty melodies as well as barrages of technical riffs that belied their youth. Then, with this major-label effort (the follow-up to 2003 fan favourite The Artist In The Ambulance), they made the leap from mastering one genre to wielding several at a time.

The Californians’ fourth album was a moment of self-actualisation comparable to Radiohead’s OK Computer and the Beatles’ Revolver. Cues from prog, metal, post-rock, emo and even jazz were pulled into a cohesive whole, then kept from falling apart by the sheer emotion of the songwriting and Dustin Kensrue’s vocals. From the chant-along might of Image Of The Invisible to the closing, climactic Red Sky, Vheissu was an imaginative opus that should have stunned and bedazzled the mainstream.

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.

Coheed And Cambria are reaching the end of their epic, 12-album Amory Wars concept with The Father Of Make Believe. With mainman Claudio Sanchez in a precarious position as he contemplates his future, it’s the band’s most out-there album yet – equal parts a sci-fi prog epic and personal tome of uncertainty.

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While some bands’ vision for a concept record would stretches across a double album, that would barely scratch the surface for Coheed And Cambria. Founder, lead songwriter and tireless creative Claudio Sanchez mapped out an intergalactic odyssey with the intention of spreading it across 12 full-length releases. Save for the much-needed respite of 2015’s The Color Before The Sun – which temporarily unshackled the group from the chains of such a lofty concept – it’s driven the band’s existence for nearly a quarter of a century.

The 10th album in the band’s Amory Wars series, Vaxis – Act III: The Father Of Make Believe, finds the final straight in sight, with only two more instalments to follow. Naturally, that’s led to some pensive self-reflection for Sanchez.

“We’re now at the third part of this five-part thing, and I can almost see the end,” he says. “But what will my life be like without it?”

Set in another galazy, The Amory Wars story is bluntly described by Sanchez as the tale of “a fucked-up dysfunctional family in space.” But really, such high fantasy provides him with a mask to be vulnerable without baring all. “I had a really hard time putting myself at the forefront of the songs,” he admits. “That’s why I created The Amory Wars. I grew up on Emory Drive in a small town outside of New York City; the characters Coheed and Cambria very much resemble my parents. I play a character in the story.”

He continues: “Every life is nuanced, right? I grew up in a chemically dependent household. My dad was a functioning addict, so that’s where the dragonfly [a key creature within the story] came from – it resembles a syringe. The father turns into a monster, and the mother is a shield to protect the children.

“I never wanted to villainize the people I was singing about; but I needed to write music to feel good. This is a therapeutic thing for me. And as I got older and became a father, I started making peace with things. It’s my life – I should be able to speak about it.

As much as this isn’t the end, I see the end. I don’t know if it’s a metamorphosis into something that isn’t a prison, but there’s a way to move on

“I had a great upbringing despite the dysfunction. I thought it was fantastic to take moments in my life and make them these grandiose paintings of moments in time that I had experienced one way, but maybe the audience can experience in another.”

The band’s lyrics, as well as a series of novels and comic books, are the vehicles for his confessional storytelling, which has always been tailored to welcome new listeners with each album. Fans rooted deep into the lore will hear character themes and sonic nuggets oscillate through their discography; but for those who just want music to digest and enjoy, the band’s mix of emotional post-hardcore and very nerdy prog has proven a winner.

“Early on, I attempted to try to inject concept jargon into songs, and I didn’t really love that,” Sanchez says. “It felt a little forced. I wanted it to be a surprise that there was a bigger concept. It’s more suggestive than necessary.”

As he dove deeper into the chaotic narrative arc, the music became more ambitious. “I feel like we’ve constructed the freedom to do whatever it is we choose to do creatively,” he says. “That’s always something that I’ve strived for. I never wanted there to be restrictions. But then there’s the question of, ‘Did I imprison myself in the concept?’”

Unsurprisingly, he answers this question in musical form with So It Goes, the final song on the new record. “It’s a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, which only gets mentioned in conjunction with something dying. I was very much influenced by that. Some of those stories have really inspired some of the motives in The Amory Wars – one being the character of Billy Pilgrim being unstuck in time and being able to see everything at once.

“And so for me, as much as this isn’t the end, I see the end. I don’t know if that end is finite, or if it’s a metamorphosis into something that isn’t a prison, but there is a way to move on to something else.”

To get to that answer, first he had to make sense of the lyrics that passed through his lips. “A big theme in Coheed records is identity and mortality. And the older I get, those themes become louder. I understood what conceptually was supposed to happen with the story, but initially I was writing without the rules of the story.

“I found a very personal theme of questioning who I am and where I would be if I’d made different decisions along the way. When I was listening to the material, it was like going through some sort of mid-life crisis. I was asking, ‘Do I want to be in Coheed And Cambria any more? Do I want to try a different avenue of creativity?’ That theme made a lot of sense for me, being at the centre point of this pentalogy.”

When I write I like to cover a lot of ground; I think that might make Coheed a hard pill to swallow

As ever, Coheed’s latest batch of songs are highly fantastical, but it doesn’t take much to understand the meanings. “Goodbye, Sunshine is about saying goodbye to a thing that is really important to you. But it’s followed by Searching For Tomorrow, which is about looking for a better existence past that,” he explains. “There’s a real duality to the record.”

Having found meaning in his subconscious writing, Sanchez returned to Paris, where the initial concept for The Amory Wars was created. He jokes that, in 1998, the city was “another world” to the young, impressionable musician, having previously only travelled as far as New Jersey, his neighbouring state. He spent 10 days in the French capital, exploring, writing, reconnecting with Coheed And Cambria’s roots.

“Paris will always be important to me,” he reflects. “Every once in a while, I’ll return there and see if I’m inspired by anything. Some of The Afterman story [2012/13] was written there. This time I went on a writing retreat, and I wrote Meri Of Mercy and Blind Side Sunny there. They almost act as the binding of the album.

“They’re right in the middle and they’re extremely different. One is very pretty and airy – something about the textures in Meri Of Mercy reminded me of my grandfather passing, and maybe somewhere in the afterlife being reunited with the wife he’d lost for 40 years. Blind Side Sunny is aggressive and gritty.

“When I write music I like to cover a lot of ground, and I think that sometimes might make Coheed a hard pill to swallow. It really doesn’t fall into one category, but it resembles my personality. There are moments when I can be open and soft, and moments when I can be aggressive. It’s important to showcase both sides. Again, this is therapy.”

Amid his self-wrangling, Sanchez has greatly expanded Coheed’s musical spectrum on The Father Of Make Believe. He points to album opener Yesterday’s Lost. “It’s a very conscious effort to reintroduce The Afterman’s theme, and it’s very [folk singer] Iron & Wine-y. There was an instrument in the background, called the Therevox, which emulates an old French analogue synthesiser; I used a little bit of that to create some otherworldliness.”

It’s not the only oddball instrument that makes its way onto the record. “I’ve got stuff everywhere! When I was doing The Flood, I needed something that sounded like water, so I used a waterphone [a strange, spiralling instrument that looks like it should be in a modern art gallery]. You fill it with water and bow it. It sounds alien. I like trying to find instruments and textures that aren’t obvious; they sit in the background and really paint a visual picture.

“I also used a box instrument called an apprehension engine. It’s something that Mark Korven [composer for the Robert Eggers horror films The Lighthouse and The Witch] made. It’s a scary instrument!”

As much as I’m questioning my identity and myself inside Coheed And Cambria, we are stronger together

They’re vehicles to push Coheed’s sound as far as possible. “For me, there isn’t any other contemporary music that moves quite like Coheed does,” he says. “There’s a lot of peaks and valleys, and I feel that’s something a lot of music lacks – the complexity of movement and vibes. I feel we cover a lot of ground in a very creative and interesting way.”

The Flood helps support that claim: it’s part of the thrilling, near-20-minute, four-part masterwork The Continuum, which closes out the record and the third part of The Amory Wars saga. “Going over those questions of growth and identity, I felt the song really amplified that,” Sanchez explains. “Mr Nobody is a very self-deprecating acceptance of ‘You’ll forever be known as nothing.’ That’s the hyper side of the spectrum.

“Part two, The Flood, was almost like a rebirth. It reminded me of a horrible acid trip when I was a teenager – I saw my life flash by in these still pictures, to the point where I found myself as an orb of energy, like it was the nucleus of my id or my ego. And then I was abruptly awakened from it. I think I was out of my mind on a couch somewhere and somebody was afraid I was dying.

“Then we get to Tethered Together, which, as much as I’m questioning my identity and myself inside Coheed And Cambria, we are stronger together – and that feels like the climax of the story. Whereas So It Goes becomes the resolve; regardless of everything, we still move on. That’s why I thought conceptually the four movements really worked together – they give closure to this record.

“I feel a personal connection to all Coheed records,” he adds. “But this one resonates differently.”

You can usually find this Prog scribe writing about the heavier side of the genre, chatting to bands for features and news pieces or introducing you to exciting new bands that deserve your attention. Elsewhere, Phil can be found on stage with progressive metallers Prognosis or behind a camera teaching filmmaking skills to young people.