Song Premiere: Coheed and Cambria, 'The Afterman'

Click to listen to Coheed and Cambria's 'The Afterman'

A decade after Coheed and Cambria released their debut album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade, frontman Claudio Sanchez continues the band's epic sci-fi story with The Afterman: Ascension, the first part of a two-album tale that furthers the group's Amory Wars comic book storyline. Title track "The Afterman" features Sanchez's commanding falsetto and the band's intricately layered instrumentation. However, despite the grandiose scale of Amory Wars, Sanchez found inspiration for the double album on a much more personal level: the death of his wife's close friend.

"She found out about it through Facebook, which is the most impersonal way to receive this intensely personal news," Sanchez tells Rolling Stone. "Later that night, I sat down and just started writing a song. It became the album's title track, from the point of view of her experience. Everything else followed from there."

The Afterman: Ascension will be released on October 9th. The second volume, The Afterman: Descension, is set for February 2013 release.