Credit: Jimmy FontaineLast September, before any one had heard of COVID-19, Claudio Sanchez wrote a new song for the next Coheed and Cambria album. The title of the track: “Hallelujah Quarantine.”
As Sanchez tells ABC Audio, the song was written about a “criminal sect” that exists in the world of Coheed’s long-running Amory Wars concept, which would hold an annual ceremony called the ‘Quarantine.’
“They sort of conjure up the young basically in this…cotillion sort of way, only to end up using their blood to keep them young,” Sanchez explains.
Of course, the word ‘quarantine’ has taken on a whole new significance in the time of COVID-19.
“Now, I’m, like, ‘I don’t know if I can ever release it,’ because it just feels like it might be a little insensitive,” Sanchez says.
While we may never get to hear “Hallelujah Quarantine,” Sanchez remains hard at work on the upcoming album, the follow-up to 2018’s The Unheavenly Creatures. The next record will be the second part in the Vaxis saga, a new storyline within Amory Wars.
“Right before the quarantine, we started talking with Chase Stone, who had done the artwork for The Unheavenly Creatures, the Vaxis: Part I story within the Amory Wars” Sanchez says. “We started to talk about some of the conceptual things that are happening in Part II.”
While he’s in quarantine, Sanchez is also recording new songs with his solo project, The Prize Fighter Inferno.
“I enjoy being at home,” he says. “I enjoy creating, and so I’m just kinda taking advantage of the time and trying to put out as much stuff as I can to keep people happy.”
By Josh Johnson
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