Stop me if this has ever happened to you. You rent out your country home to some people and then come back to learn that there was an illegal pot farm on the premises without your knowledge.
That's exactly what happened to Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez. Speaking to Metal Hammer, Claudio revealed how the whole ordeal ended up inspiring him to write the band's new album, the first which is not a concept album.
Claudio and his wife rented their country house while out on tour and when they returned home, to do an inspection before moving back in, they noticed a particular odor in the house:
“In anticipating his birth we were contemplating moving back to the country house. It was time for us to do the yearly inspection but it kept getting put off.
“My wife got a text from the renters, saying the house had been broken into. We thought it was odd so we called the police. They said no one had been living in the house – but they suspected it had been turned into a cannabis farm.
“There was no real evidence aside from the smell and the residue, but they thought it was a $300,000-a-month operation.”
There was a point where Claudio and his wife had to be sequestered for questioning to make sure they weren't involved in the operation. He started writing material that was far more personal than previous Coheed albums and almost considered doing a solo record:
“I was having a hard time honing in on the conceptual writing. I was starting to write more personally. I started to ponder the idea of releasing it as a solo record because it didn’t fall into the confines of a Coheed record.”
Ultimately, the material written ended up being the band's new record, The Color Before The Sun, which is out October 9th. The first single, "You Got Spirit, Kid," can be heard here.
A previous version of this story mentioned that Claudio and his wife were in danger of losing their newborn son. That was proven to be factually incorrect by the source that reported it.
