Claudio Sanchez was working on the follow-up to Coheed and Cambria’s 2018 album Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures before life went into lockdown due to the pandemic. With the Armory Wars in the midst of a cease fire, the frontman has turned his attention back to his long-gestating solo project, The Prize Fighter Inferno. Sanchez has revealed he’s been writing a new album under the moniker, and today he’s shared a pair of songs to prove it.
Speaking with SPIN, Sanchez said he hadn’t returned to Prize Fighter Inferno since 2012’s Half Measures EP out of a sense of “guilt” over having to put Coheed on hold. “… I’m like, ‘Oh, I wanna go do this thing … I wanna go exercise my ego with a side project.’ It makes me feel horrible, so I never do it.” Now that he’s unable to “just pass around ideas” with his bandmates, however, he sees it as the perfect time to “exorcise this demon.”
His plan is to record nine new tracks — including a cover of Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me” — for the first Prize Fighter Inferno full-length in 14 years. (The only other LP from the project is 2006’s My Brother’s Blood Machine.) Coheed drummer Josh Eppard is even said to be collaborating with him on at least one of the songs. Last month, Sanchez quietly released “More Than Love”, and now he’s back with two more songs: “Death Rattle” and “Crazy for You”.
The former is a neon-lined jam that calls to mind the melodrama of early-aughts emo pop. The latter, meanwhile, feels like some dark trip-hop electronica and features a vocal sample of Sanchez’s 5-year-old son, Atlas.
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“[Atlas] “so into music, and so fascinated with all the gadgetry I have in this room I’m working out of,” Sanchez said. “It’s fun to let him come in and explore it and sample himself and twist it up with some module and see his wonderment kind of flourish in his eyes. It’s very cool.”
Take a listen to both new Prize Fighter Inferno cuts below, and stay tuned for more from the Coheed and Cambria side project.
