E-Mail This Article to a Friend No limits Coheed and Cambria BY SEAN RICHARDSON

Coheed and Cambria’s current album, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (Equal Vision), has alternarock fans calling them kings of a colorful new subgenre: emo-prog. A recent MTV headline on the upstate New York band echoed many others by calling them "the emo Rush." That’s due in no small part to singer Claudio Sanchez’s Geddy Lee upper register. And the band’s name comes from two comic book characters created by Sanchez. The enigmatic scenarios outlined in Sanchez’s songs are likewise drawn from Coheed and Cambria’s various adventures. You can’t get more prog than that.

Coheed’s recent show at NYC’s Irving Plaza was the first date of their current tour with openers Rainer Maria, Funeral for a Friend, and Brazil. The three-week North American outing, which winds up next week at the annual Skate and Surf Festival on the New Jersey shore, is the band’s biggest headlining trek to date. On April 15 at the Palladium in Worcester, they’ll be joined (for one night only) by former At the Drive-In dudes Sparta, who share management with Coheed and have a new album of their own in the can.

Other groups might run from labels like emo-prog and emo-Rush, but not these guys. "Because we’ve been getting all these comparisons, I’ve actually started listening to Rush more," says bassist Michael Todd, who’s enjoying a day off in Providence when I get him on the phone. "I think they’re a great band. I definitely wouldn’t mind a career like theirs, spanning 30 years." But don’t mistake Coheed for one-dimensional technique freaks: they also borrow from rock legends of a less cerebral nature. "The whole album is inspired by classic rock: the Police, the Cars, Led Zeppelin, Queen. It’s just all the music we like — we don’t want to limit ourselves. Sometimes we’re having a hardcore day, sometimes we’re having an ultra-pop day."

Coheed made their new video, "A Favor House Atlantic," on Long Island with director Christian Winters ("Brand New," "Taking Back Sunday"). The song is a pop-metal rager with sharp hooks — "Good eye, sniper/I’ll shoot, you run" — and the band go to a club show starring a 1980s version of themselves in the video. Drummer Joshua Eppard gets smacked for trying to look up a girl’s skirt, and Todd has a shady encounter in the bathroom with a transvestite. Onstage, he sports a retro headband and does a mean scissor kick. The stage moves are ironic, but the fashion statement is not. "I’ve moved on to bandannas these days," he laughs. "I like having long hair, and it stops the sweat from getting in my eyes. We wrote that video while we were on tour. We were like, ‘Yo, let’s make a really stupid video.’"

Todd admits that Coheed have met with a few major labels, but they’re staying with Equal Vision for now. Success has afforded the band luxuries like hotel rooms and more spare time to write new music — two things that were lacking when they had a breakdown in late 2002, at the end of their first stint on the road. "None of us had ever toured before, and we all had full-time jobs," explains Todd. "When we wanted a break, everybody was like, ‘You can’t take a break now, you’re just gaining steam.’ We went too long without taking a break, and we collapsed in on ourselves. So we took a month off. We hung out, talked to each other, and decided, ‘This is what we want to do.’ We’ve operated much more as a family since then."

Coheed and Cambria perform on Thursday, April 15, at the Palladium in Worcester; call (508) 797-9696.