Coheed and Cambria, Columbus caught in the Keywork
Some nights are just bigger than others. The air hums differently, the crowd looks hungrier, and you feel the pull in your gut before the first note ever drops. Columbus had that electricity on this night, and it was mine to chase. Three bands I’ve loved in different ways, all in my hometown, all under the open sky of KEMBA Live! — with my friends, my camera, and not nearly enough sleep.
The line was already coiled around the venue like a snake when I arrived, a sea of Coheed’s Keywork tattoos and t-shirts glowing under streetlights. These were my people. I grabbed my photo credentials, felt that strange mixture of authority and impostor syndrome it always brings, and made my way inside.
Before the chaos began, I bumped into Brandon Lewis of Punkerton Records, who dropped the kind of news that changes the whole night: Fred Mascherino was back on tour with Taking Back Sunday. My favorite era, the one I never saw in the flesh — and here it was, breathing down my neck in real time.
Foxing cracked open the evening like a molotov cocktail wrapped in silk. Their set oscillated between hushed melancholy and jagged screams. They walked on to the opening tracks of their self-titled 2024 record, easing into “Secret History” before plunging straight into the existential firestorm of “HELL 99.”
From there, it was a carousel of bangers, a setlist that refused to sit still. Some of the crowd was confused, unsure what to do with a band that doesn’t play by anyone’s rules — but I loved it. Finally, I got to capture them through the lens instead of just devouring their records in the dark.
Then came Taking Back Sunday, and the entire place swelled with a sort of collective time-warp. The stage lights cut, a career-spanning montage rolled to Queen’s “Don’t Stop me Now,” and suddenly we were all twenty years younger, sweaty basement shows stitched into our bloodstream.
When Adam Lazzara and Fred Mascherino stepped into the lights and fired off “A Decade Under the Influence,” the place exploded. I’ve seen this band nearly thirty times, maybe more, and I’ll admit the last few tours felt like a shadow of their own myth. But not tonight. Tonight, Adam and Fred were flawless foils, bouncing harmonies and grins off each other like two kids who’d broken into the liquor cabinet before prom. It felt like home — ragged, loud, and beautiful.
And then, Coheed and Cambria. The architects of my own musical awakening. Ask a Coheed fan where they were when they first heard “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth,” and they’ll look you dead in the eye and tell you their coordinates like it was the day they were born. I was no different. That record rewired my entire sense of possibility, and now I was here with thousands of my closest strangers, screaming along with Claudio Sanchez’s otherworldly howl.
They opened with “Yesterday’s Lost,” weaving a setlist that spanned their entire mythology — from “Second Stage Turbine Blade” to “Vaxis: Act III.” Midway through their encore, they blindsided us with a cover of “Mr. Brightside,” and suddenly the venue was one colossal, drunken choir. By the time “In Keeping Secrets,” “Tethered Together,” and the hammer-swinging encore of “Welcome Home” rolled out, the whole place was levitating.
Shooting Coheed is like trying to photograph a rocket launch while strapped to the rocket. Claudio’s hair whipping like a banner in the apocalypse, Josh’s drum faces contorted into grotesque, ecstatic theater, the whole band locked tighter than ever. They’ve endured, adapted, and thrived where so many of their peers collapsed under weight or ego. They look like men who still love what they do — and we are lucky bastards to be invited along.
That night in Columbus was a reminder: some bands soundtrack your youth, others soundtrack your survival. Coheed does both.
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