Live Coverage: Coheed and Cambria, Porcupine Tree, and The Dear Hunter at The Sunshine Theater

I've been dying to see Coheed since that other fuckface Tynan has got to see them a billion times, so when I heard Coheed was heading towards Albuquerque with Porcupine Tree AND The Dear Hunter, I was more down for this concert than a Bro getting offered to visit a basketball shorts factory.

The Dear Hunter began their set at 7:30, bringing their hardest and heaviest songs, trying to stay relevant to a crowd purely there for Coheed, and The Dear Hunter strutted their stuff, that's for sure. They sounded great, as they always have to me, the only problem was, they felt terribly tacked on to the band listing, they played for 25 minutes tops, and never really got the crowd on their side. The one thing I will give Coheed fans though is that they can sure be a bit more accepting of interesting vocalists after having Claudio rape their socially-inept-weird-kid ears for so long, so they definitely seem phased by Casey Crescenzo's high, screamy, creamy voice! Overall, they sounded great, didn't get to play long, and made my heart sink when I didn't get to hear Red Hands :,(

Porcupine tree took stage after a HALF HOUR SET UP. Good fucking lord, you would have thought they were unloading a Neil Peart drum kit or getting the giant mechanical Eddy out and ready, but they weren't. They just took a super long time. They did have a video slideshow that accompanied most of their songs, and before I get into how they sounded, let me say that the video asthetic altered between wannabe Tool music videos, the visualizations on windows media player, and a slide show of a high-school metalhead's "Cool/Random stuff" they saved off of google images. I think you are starting to see where I'm going. I was hardly a Porcupine Tree fan, only skimming through In Absentia, and I was hardly impressed by seeing them live. It felt like a lot of the songs were Tool songs. Call me ignorant, arrogant, or a fuckface, but that's what the sounded like to me. When they weren't sounding like Tool, they were kinda sounding like Dream Theater, it was slightly aggonizing considering that they played for an hour and a half. To be honest, they were one of my more least liked bands I've seen live. :,(

Finally fucking Coheed and Cambria started, and they begun with a bang, kicking shit off with "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3", I had been told it was awesome live, but holy fuck. The song was the perfect opener, with the sweet badass roll of waves playing behind Claudio on the projector screen. MY NIPPLES WERE ROCK HARD. That was definitely one of my more favorite concert moments, thanks Coheed. They really did sound awesome live, Claudio sounded great and played solos in the usual boner-inspiring fashion. They mixed classic Coheed songs with some cool new ones, one of my favorites off the new album, "Pearl Of The Stars" was a highlight with it's quieter, darker mood and more acoustic feel. I'd say about a third of their show was new songs, most of them sounding pretty good, with just a small amount of polish needed for them to sound perfect live. For the encore Claudio came out alone to play "Wake Up" alone with the crowd which was very nice. They ended with an old stand-by, "Welcome Home" which was a bit of a surprise, but in the end it was a lot of fun for the crowd, and ended the concert on a high note. Coheed is definitely worth sitting through an hour and a half of Pork-u-fuck Pee. :)

The Dear Hunter Set List (not perfect):
In Cauda Venemum
The Church and The Dime
Mustard Gas
He Said He Had A Story
The Procession

Coheed and Cambria Set List (almost perfect, and in perfect order):
In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
Ten Speed (Of God's Blood & Burial)
Here We Are Juggernaut
The Crowning
The Suffering
Pearl Of The Stars
Everything Evil
When Skeletons Live
Guns of Summer
Delirium Trigger
No World For Tomorrow
Encore:
Wake Up
This Shattered Symphony
Welcome Home