
Coheed and Cambria & Taking Back Sunday
If you’re a fan of basically any music genre involving a guitar, 2022 feels like a year for looking back. Depending on who you talk to the pop-punk revival is in full swing, followed closely by an emo revival and possibly also a post-hardcore revival quietly (read: loudly) waiting in the wings. It would be tempting for a band like Coheed and Cambria — whose groundbreaking first album “Second Stage Turbine Blade” turns 20 this year — to revisit the sounds of genres they helped pioneer. But making the same album twice just isn’t in their blood. It never has been. “I’ve always thought of us as sort of the oddity, the underdog,” said frontman and guitarist Claudio Sanchez. “Why follow trends [now]? I just wanted to write a record that was right for Coheed in 2022. We’re still breaking ground.”
Taking Back Sunday, who released their eighth studio album 152 in late 2023, often refer to themselves as the ‘luckiest guys you will meet.’ The new album, featuring 10 intensely vulnerable and absorbing new tracks was delivered with fresh ambition and a newfound purpose. It stands among the most genuinely reflective and emotionally pure efforts of Taking Back Sunday’s illustrious career. Starting out just hoping to release at least one album and go on tour, the band has since sold millions of albums, has multiple tracks with streams hitting the multiple hundred million mark, toured the world several times over, performed at all of the biggest festivals and are still always looking forward.