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http://www.rollingstone.com/assets/images/album_review/9388d55ba234c4ab00acf5a3e8b4b2b424626911.jpg Year of the Black Rainbow

Coheed and Cambria

Year of the Black Rainbow

Columbia
Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rating
5 2 0
April 12, 2010

Generation Y's version of Rush, these New York prog-rockers have used their yowling albums to chronicle the Amory Wars saga, an epic sci-fi fantasia involving a 78-planet solar system called Heaven's Fence and . . . oh, never mind. Storywise, Album Five is as labyrinthine as ever: A deluxe version comes with a 352-page novel co-written by frontman Claudio Sanchez. Musically, though, it's the same old mix of impressive musicianship and arena-size agita. Coheed sometimes write a fetching tune — see the tender ballad "Far" — but Rainbow feels both silly and retrograde.

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