When Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez started writing after the release of the band's last album, 2022's Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind, he wasn't necessarily thinking about putting together another record. Then he was hit with a death in his family.

"I lost my uncle," Sanchez tells ABC Audio. "It sort of got me thinking about just the realties of leaving loved ones behind."

Sanchez started asking himself the kinds of questions people are faced with "when they find themselves at this stage in their life," which brought the themes of a new Coheed album, The Father of Make Believe, into place.

"'Now that I'm here, did I do it the way I had always dreamed of doing it? What does the future look like? Does this continue?'" Sanchez says. "I guess just midlife questions, really, and that's kinda what started to establish the identity of the record."

Those questions also got Sanchez thinking about the purpose and eventual end of the Amory Wars, the long-running concept that he created to guide the story of Coheed's music. That's reflected in how the Amory Wars plot progresses in The Father of Make Believe and how Sanchez relates to its character Vaxis.

"I'm not gonna be without [the concept] now, because I wanna finish it, but what does life look like after it?" Sanchez says. "That kind of goes into the character's trajectory of Vaxis, who is now realizing that the future is his to design in his own image, so there's a connection there."

The Father of Make Believe is out now. Coheed will be supporting the record on a spring tour with Mastodon and a summer run with Taking Back Sunday.

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