Originally named Shabutie (with two EPs behind them), New York's Coheed And Cambria, fronted by vocalist-guitarist Claudio Sanchez, carried out a historical fusion of the progressive-rock tradition and the emo-core tradition on their debut album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade (Equal Vision, 2002). Travis Stever (guitar), Michael Todd (bass), Josh Eppard (drums) and Dave Parker (keyboards) coadiuvate the leader in his insane endeavours: extended tracks with odd time signatures, convoluted ballads with fiery guitars, anthemic instrumental crescendos and everything in between. Sanchez's shrill girlish vocals invented the melody of Time Consumer, featuring Dr Know of Bad Brains on hard-rock guitar, and Hearshot Kid Disaster and Neverender, songs that seem to have been created as instrumental pieces. Only the driving and cohesive Devil In Jersey City and the poignant and haunting Delerium Trigger resemble the traditional song format. Alas, the longer track, Godsend Conspirator (13:45), was also the weakest (five minutes of indiscriminate bombast, then a sleepy coda).
This "second stage" turned out to be the first installment in a sci-fi tetralogy about two characters, Coheed and Cambria.

In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3 (Equal Vision, 2003) starts with the majestic piano melody that closed Second Stage. The eight-minute In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth stresses the fundamental dialectics of the band: the shrill verbose emotional vocalist versus the cool fractured heavy riffs versus the casual syncopated drumming. The virtuoso dynamics of The Crowing show off the band's uncanny ability to stretch drama into an almost supernatural dimension. The three-movement gothic fantasia Camper Velourium runs the gamut from folkish hard-rock reminiscent of Jethro Tull (first movement) to almost hysterical death-metal (third movement). The nine-minute closer, The Light And the Glass, begins as a pastoral acoustic ballad with flute and transitions smoothly into a denser and denser power-ballad. Blood Red Summer, A Favor House Atlantic and especially Three Evils Embodied In Love And Shadow are essays on how music can sound poppy and ponderous at the same time. Both bombastic and demonic, this is indeed music for the renaissance after the apocalypse.

A crisper production and more variety are mixed blessings on Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness (Sony, 2005). The album is filled with awfully mediocre material like Ten Speed, Crossing the Frame, Once Upon Your Dead Body, Wake Up, The Lying Lies & Dirty Secrets of Miss Erica Court, Mother May I, ... that is only justified by the sleep production and the search for diversity. The real core of the album are the melodic songs, each a trivial blend of classic styles. The whispered folk singalong Always & Never sounds like a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's The Boxer. The stately metal romp with orchestral backing of Welcome Home sits halfway between Mars Volta and Manowar. Apollo I: The Writing Writer is a hybrid of gallopping emocore and Bon Jovi-esque popmetal. The infectious emo-pop of The Suffering relies on staccato guitars and organs like Alkaline Trio covering the Cars. However, these half-baked catchy tunes eclipse the ambition of the 30-minute four-movement suite The Willing Well, a diligent but overlond elaboration of ideas from Yes and Rush: if I - Fuel for the Feeding End is disposable, II - Fear Through the Eyes of Madness boasts the right amount of melody, truculence and crunchy riffs; III - Apollo II: The Telling Truth comes to live in the second half after much lackluster plodding, and IV - The Final Cut is a slow melodramatic power-ballad that sounds like a Pink Floyd leftover (particularly the guitar solo).

Coheed's vocalist Claudio Sanchez launched a solo side project, Prize Fighter Inferno, with My Brother's Blood Machine (2006), another complex and eclectic sci-fi concept (of mostly electronic music) that provides the story of the "Blood Machine", a prequel to the story of the "Amory Wars" (as told in previous Coheed and Cambria albums).

No World for Tomorrow (2007), subtitled "Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star, IV, Volume Two", the final installment of the saga (in which the world ends and everyone dies), largely failed to capitalize on the story, delivering at best mild melodramas such as Feather. It all sounds terribly amateurish, even the five-movement suite The End Complete.

Josh Eppard quit the band and joined again the band of his brother Joey, 3, that had debuted with Paint by Number (1999) and now released The End Is Begun (2007), while composing the music for the hip-hop act Weerd Science that had debuted with Friends and Nervous Breakdowns (2005).

Coheed And Cambria, with new drummer Chris Pennie (imported from the Dillinger Escape Plan) completed their "Amory Wars" narrative with the prequel Year Of The Black Rainbow (2010), which added at least the majestic Here We Are Juggernaut to their major canon. These short songs look odd in the catalog of the band, and each one reveals one of the tricks employed by the monoliths of the previous albums, whether it's using pomp as an instrument (This Shattered Symphony) or distracting the listener with technical skills (i>The Broken or disguising power-ballads as epic intermezzos (Far).