“It feels passionate, like it comes from the gut up. Everything is just so epic… I got goosebumps the first time I saw them perform”: Oxymorrons’ Matty Mayz watched Coheed And Cambria blow up

Coheed And Cambria, Matty Mayz of Oxymorrons — (Image credit: Press)

When he’s not fusing hip-hop and heavy metal for the 21st century, Oxymorrons drummer Matty Mayz loves the sci-fi prog of Coheed And Cambria. He told Prog why he’d liked the idea of Claudio Sanchez’ band before he discovered what they were all about.

“I used to take drum lessons at a place called the Long Island Drum Center in Nyack in New York state. I found out there was a band that was blowing up from around that area, and they used to rehearse in Nyack.

So I’m like, ‘Cool, a local band that’s making waves!’ And I’d watch Coheed And Cambria just getting bigger and bigger. This was around the time of In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3 and I was really fascinated by them.

There are so many nuances about that band. First of all, the progression of where they started and what they became, and secondly, they were just obviously very album-focused.

They have this ongoing sci-fi plot going across their albums that they then turned into a comic book series. Every single one of their albums felt like a piece of a much larger puzzle.

It was very cool that they were able to grab singles out of them, but the album is what felt so important because it was part of the larger story.

Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness is where I feel that they took that pivot from a lot of the post-hardcore stuff and really became a prog rock band. It was clearly the point where it felt like it was such a different album than everything else.

They started to deviate away from normal song structures, like, ‘This is clearly the hook, and this is the verse, and then this is the bridge and now we’re going back to it.’ That record, for me, sounds like something so different – but it was still Coheed And Cambria the whole time.

It’s as if someone was writing a play and giving people these moments of reprieve and then these really huge, epic moments

There’s this theatre about their live performance that feels like more than just watching a band perform. It feels passionate; it feels like it comes from the gut up. Everything is just so epic.

The way they curate their show, they’re not just playing an album back-to-front. It’s as if someone was writing a play and giving people these moments of reprieve and then these really huge, epic moments – it’s really a journey. I got goosebumps the first time I saw them perform. They’re amazing musicians.”

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Julian Marszalek is the former Reviews Editor of The Blues Magazine. He has written about music for Music365, Yahoo! Music, The Quietus, The Guardian, NME and Shindig! among many others. As the Deputy Online News Editor at Xfm he revealed exclusively that Nick Cave’s second novel was on the way. During his two-decade career, he’s interviewed the likes of Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Ozzy Osbourne, and has been ranted at by John Lydon. He’s also in the select group of music journalists to have actually got on with Lou Reed. Marszalek taught music journalism at Middlesex University and co-ran the genre-fluid Stow Festival in Walthamstow for six years.