As frontman for prog-metal outfit Coheed and Cambria, as well as the writer behind the comic book series The Amory Wars, with its ongoing storyline tying into the band’s musical output, Claudio Sanchez has a full plate and then some. But very sporadically, over the past two and a half decades, he’s been toiling away at the lo-fi electronica side project The Prize Fighter Inferno.
Like the Coheed and Cambria material, it aligns with the narrative of the comics. The contrast is how under the radar The Prize Fighter Inferno flies, completely by design. Originally a solo effort, it’s developed into a collaboration with Chondra Echert, a fellow comic book writer and co-creator of The Amory Wars, who also happens to be married to Sanchez.
The initial Prize Fighter Inferno music surfaced in the early aughts, and has since swelled to two full lengths, a handful of EPs and a series of singles, including the just released “Virtual Pioneers.” Sanchez has voiced in the past that when he’s worked on the project, he’ll sometimes feel guilt at not dedicating himself to Coheed instead, one of the reasons why there haven’t been any live shows for the venture, that is, until this month.
Sanchez and Echert are in the midst of the first ever concerts for The Prize Fighter Inferno, a dozen dates dubbed the Before They Bury Me Tour. This Wednesday (February 21), the run makes a stop at Royale in Boston’s Theatre District.
Just before the tour kicked off, Sanchez sat down with Vanyaland for a 617 Q&A (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings) where he talked about why now is the right time for The Prize Fighter Inferno to make a live debut. He also discussed how exposed the project makes him feel, the inspiration he’s hoping the shows will provide and what someone should do if they want to get into the Coheed and Cambria extended universe, but have no idea where to begin.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: The Prize Fighter Inferno has always been something you’ve kept as a very, very long arm’s length side project. Why is now the right time to do a tour?
Claudio Sanchez: I think I just wanted to try something different. I’ve been so comfortable doing sort of the live rock band experience; big, loud. I felt like now is a chance for me to do something a little more intimate, a little bit more exposed. That was it. And also, my wife was saying, “Our son is off from school for two weeks. Maybe we should consider doing something around that time and get a bus and just kind of travel around the states as just the family?” but at the same time sort of bring the music to a forum that hasn’t happened yet. But I really think that I’ve been doing a rock band for a really long time – and continue too – the idea to try something new just makes a whole lot of sense to me. I might learn some things about myself that could cool and be beneficial in the other projects and just in life going forward.
When you’re at the genesis of a song, how do you know that when you’re working on it, it’s going to be Prize Fighter Inferno or this will be Coheed? Or do you have songs that you think are going to be Prize Fighter but then they matriculate into a Coheed song?
Typically, I do know, but there are those songs that will sometimes skirt the line. I think one good example is the song that made the last [Coheed and Cambria] record, “A Disappearing Act.” Though when I constructed it, I did think that it would become a Coheed song, I think it does have some tonality that matches what Prize Fighter does. But for the most part, the approaches are a little different. But yeah, sometimes a Prize Fighter song will reveal itself quick, and the same goes for Coheed.
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You said that this tour might provide inspiration for you, and I’m going to read the quote, “It may be even birth, a whole new avenue of expression for me.” Is there anything specific that you’re alluding to or thinking might come of taking this on the road?
Right. I mean, I think just this is such a different animal, the way we have it set up. It’s not a traditional rock band situation, and with that comes a vulnerability. When I’m playing in a rock band, there’s a lot of sound. It takes up a lot of space and it’s comfortable. I know that world so well. Whereas this, I mean, playing in the rehearsals, I don’t think I’ve been this nervous in quite a while. It’s very exposing. It’s very much focused on the singing. There’s a lot of nuance that is almost harder than when I’m in Coheed – and Coheed is difficult. But this, there’s a lot of movement, there’s a lot of projection and it’s all exposed.
How do you emotionally approach that anxiety of doing a tour like this and doing shows where you are so exposed?
Not well! [laughs] No, I am a nervous wreck. I’m really thankful that my wife is, she’s actually accompanying me doing all the harmonies, so she’s with us and she has a confidence that for some reason I don’t have and, I mean, I’ve been doing this for a long time. But I think it’s just in my makeup to be that way. I’m a pretty introverted person. This material was created in an introverted environment. My immediate goal was never to really share it in a live setting, but again, with age came that idea to challenge myself and do it.
And so now here I am at the cusp of this tour starting and I do. It’s just a different feeling and as much as I welcome it, I fear it, but it’s cool. I think I’m going to take away something from it regardless of how it’s perceived or how I feel about it, negative or positive, I think I’m going to learn from it and I’m going to take whatever that is, and then I’m going to push it into the next effort.
Speaking of your wife, I’m guessing the working dynamic with Chondra is a bit different than your work with Coheed. Having her as your partner in life and in a band, do you have to consciously set aside time to talk about the music – or even the comics – or does it just come up naturally and you’re like, “Okay, let’s bookmark that for a later discussion when we’re not dealing with having the kid do this or regular life things?”
I mean, I just talk about it all the time. Whenever it comes up is when it comes up, and there are moments where maybe it’s not appropriate and you save it for later, but for the most part, that’s what we do. Things come up and we have to keep up with them. I’m getting emails for covers of comic art, and we both have to look at them and approve them in a timely fashion because our deadlines for those things are about to come up. Same goes for this project. When our son is at school, we’re rehearsing.
The music is a lot different from the main gig, too. Is there a hope that Coheed fans will come along with you or is this something that’s you look at as totally separate and if people from the Coheed side join in, that’s great but, if not, you’re kind of doing it for your own musical outlet anyway?
I think it’s a little bit of everything. I love this type of music, because it is a bit different – aside from the fact that it’s me as the vocal piece – it’s different from Coheed. So, I do love that some Coheed fans embrace it. With that, I’m very appreciative, but I also would love for it to attract people that wouldn’t necessarily get into Coheed. So, I’m really open for whoever is receptive to the material. But for me, the project was just to be allowed to explore things and things that I wouldn’t necessarily naturally do with Coheed.
And that being said, Coheed is a pretty far-reaching musical adventure. We do a lot of stuff. But for this, it’s like… I don’t know if this is a great analogy, but when I’m on stage with Coheed, I’m not the personality I am in my everyday life. Something switches and I feel very confident when the stage is happening and I’m up there with my friends and we’re doing our thing. Inferno, it feels more like the person in every day is about to walk up on that stage almost as if, say, Superman is happening in Coheed, Clark Kent is about to go and do his thing with Prize Fighter.
What were some of your touchstones, growing up or just as a fan, of different electronic music or music that spread across genres in the folktronica kind of vibe?
For me, one of my favorite records growing up as a kid was that first John Frusciante record. When I was younger, how I learned how to write music was [by] recording it. I had cassette four-tracks and everything always sounded a bit lo-fi. They weren’t pumping out 48 volts to power a condenser mic. I didn’t really know what a condenser mic was as a kid. So, I’ve got a standard Shure microphone and I’m doing my thing and things sound really lo-fi and broken, and I just love that it reminded me of those demo recordings that Nirvana did. Nirvana Incesticide or Pisces Iscariot by Smashing Pumpkins. I just loved that sort of thing, that low fidelity approach and that John Frusciante record was huge for me as a kid.
And then after that, actually exploring things like Portishead was another… Bjork. Bringing those things in, but then I loved Joni Mitchell and things that my dad brought me up on like Jackson Browne or James Taylor. And so somewhere in between all of that I thought sat this. And for me, I liked exploring sound and broken things. And I think it all kind of stemmed from having a 4-track recording on 4-track recording on analog tape, and then hearing that John Frusciante record and then being like, “Oh, wow, that sounds very much like what I’m doing in this bedroom.”
What I find most interesting about you is how everything ties together: the music, the comics, it’s all part of this one story. And you’ve said fans don’t need the music to go with the comics or vice versa. But if there’s someone out there who really wants to get into it all, they’re a bit intimidated or even overwhelmed, what do you recommend is the best way they explore all the art forms you do?
I mean, for me, the music is always sort of the first place, for the most part. Comic book aside, I write these songs from a very personal place. They’re not completely riddled with fiction. I created the fiction because I’m an introverted, awkward person that had a hard time being the front man of a rock band. So, I just kind of took my personal story and made it a bit more fantastic. If you’re looking for something grandiose, then I say, yeah, consume it all. But if you just want to see yourself reflected in something, I think most people do, I think the music is where to start, because I’m not force feeding you a concept there. I’m just feeding you the emotional struggles that I went through, and that’s it. The comics are really just an extension of that created by insecurity. That’s why they’re there is because I just really didn’t want it to be so obvious that I was singing about myself.
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:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
Claudio Sanchez: The song “Virtual Pioneers” that I just recently wrote was inspired by a book called Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I had finished reading that book and I started working on this song in a dressing room in St. Paul, Minnesota and immediately was so inspired by it and the concepts behind one of the chapters in the book that all the lyrics were sort of an extension of what I had felt from that story. I’m awful at… I can’t even explain the Coheed mythos to someone quickly. I don’t want to demolish her beautiful story, but I would suggest reading that.
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
Vanyaland: Name the seven most meaningful comics that led to you immersing yourself into it as a career.
Batman: Arkham Asylum, just because I remember seeing that as a kid at a sleepover, and I’m realizing, “Wow, that’s something that could be done with a comic book?” I thought that that was pretty wild.
I think number two would probably be the character of Spawn and anything that sort of Image [Comics] did, because that whole idea of the artists leaving the big two and then going off and creating their own company to make their own stories is something I’ve always taken with me, especially when [Coheed] did its first record and went off to do it with an indie label. That’s the first thing I thought of is kind of when the artists went off and did their own thing. That DIY sort of mentality from that.
The Spider-Man Torment series. At that time I was such a huge Todd McFarlane fan, so I think anything that he did then really kind of blew me away just because the way he would draw, or just even the way that Spawn almost had this mishmash thing of Ghost Rider meets Kiss meets Spider-Man meets Doctor Strange.
Watchmen, I don’t necessarily think I discovered as that young, but it is one of my favorites, if not my favorite of all time.
I’m going to have to say Metabarons. I definitely discovered that a few years ago, and that’s been a huge one for me.
Batman: The Long Halloween. I actually have a piece from [artist] Tim Sale, actually two pieces. One from the absolute edition of The Long Halloween, which is a full black with a Batman sort of in the center. But I also have a page from Batman: Dark Victory, the book that followed it, because that’s the story that introduced me to the character of the Calendar Man. And I kind of fell in love with the concept of the Calendar Man. So, I bought this full page spread from Dark Victory where Calendar Man is coming through the mirror about to shoot Falcone’s son.
The last one would have to be the Batman adaptation of the 1989 movie, the trade paperback that came out shortly after the movie. Because I remember seeing that movie as a kid and just being, probably like every other kid that stood in the line to get into that thing, I knew after I left, I wanted to see that movie over and over and over again. And so I got that trade and I read that trade religiously. Somewhere in that made me think creating a comic, maybe that means you could adapt it into other forms, and I guess that’s the whole thing is the music into the comic kind of thing. Maybe there was some inspiration there.
It’s funny because a friend of mine just recently gifted me a box with old Coheed photos, and in it were a couple of trades, and at the bottom was that, and I was taken back and I was like, “Wow, I spent so much time with this trade.” And I’m like, “Oh, I never mention it.”
THE PRIZE FIGHTER INFERNO + CAROBAE :: Wednesday, February 21 at Royale, 279 Tremont St. in Boston, MA :: 7:30 p.m., all ages, $25 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
