WELCOME SCEINCE OLYPAINS, was what it said on the marquee sign at Roswell High in Roswell, NM, when a PBS film crew on campus filming some doc thing I saw recently.
Why isn't this as crushingly poignant to anyone else as it is to me? People are just about waving that shit off when I try to talk to them about it, unharmed, dry-eyed. WELCOME SCEINCE OLYPAINS, the fucking marquee read!


I sure talk about metal (heavy) a lot, but do you want to know my murkiest, enmossedest musical secret? Absolutely no album, POSSIBLY EVER, gives me as much sheer listening pleasure as Coheed & Cambria's Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV. Listening to much of it is like soaring mile-high, stomach-down on the back of a densely-feathered giant eagle, possibly of a coppery or bronze-like shade. (A less astute listener might think "dragon" here, but I'm telling you, it's an eagle you're soaring on.) The songs, Lord, the twists 'n' turns they take, they're like ravishingly overdecorated Victorians - no - that's not it at all - they're like those elaborate & heavily candy-decorated gingerbread houses - how you'd've felt as a seven-year-old if allowed to TEAR INTO one of those fuckers, that's what it's like to listen to that album. It evokes feasting, embellishment atop embellishment, in short total "goin' for it", and everyone knows how supportive I am of "goin' for it". And Claudio, ai, Claudio, you are a SINGER, sir.