Coheed & Cambria’s Travis Stever talks new music and coffee ahead of Palladium show

Coheed & Cambria are one of those bands you have to see live. The Nyack, New York, act has a thunderously progressive style that echoes late ‘70s and early ‘80s arena rock while going by a comic book narrative created by vocalist and guitarist Claudio Sanchez. They’re for both the rock purists and the weirdo nerds. Not a lot of bands can say that.

These days the quartet of Sanchez, guitarist Travis Stever, drummer Josh Eppard and bassist Zach Cooper have a lot going on. They have their own coffee brand, a new music video out and they’re currently in the middle of a tour with The Used, Meet Me At The Altar and Carolesdaughter that’ll be making a stop at The Palladium’s outdoor stage on 261 Main St. Worcester at 5 p.m. on Sept. 18.

On Aug. 9th, the band released a new single titled “Shoulders” along with a music video for it. The track, which is supposed to be off of the band’s upcoming 10th album that has yet to be officially announced, exhibits a synthy tone from both Stever’s and Sanchez’s guitars.

“I think that as far as ‘Shoulders’ is concerned, it was really about picking the tones that work for the song,” Stever says. “Zakk Cervini, who produced the song, definitely had a hand in creating those sounds. It was more or less thickening, as you can tell by the song itself there’s a lot of guitars doing the riff and it was more about making that riff as thick and vicious as possible. Doubling the riff, for me, was different in a sense that maybe I would be playing a different melody a lot of the time but on this particular song I just doubled a lot of the stuff that Claudio was playing on the riff. It gave both Zakk and us a chance to really add a lot of dynamics to it because the whole hook, especially in the verses, is that riff coming in and out.”

Earlier this year, the band launched its own line of coffee under the brand Coheed Roasters. So far there are three blends, The Inferno, The Knowledge and The Beast, with Stever and his household having an affinity for the latter.

“We all are coffee drinkers, especially Claudio and Zach,” he says on how the coffee brand started. “I’m not much of a coffee aficionado but my wife is so I was surprised by how much she loves The Beast blend, and I do as well. We have a lot of it in our household but a lot went into creating it because we do love coffee the way we do and everybody was able to center in on it. It’s just like if you love beer, you’re going to put a beer out there which we did through Coney Island Brewery a couple years ago. When we did that, we all took it pretty seriously to make sure that it was an IPA that we would actually want to drink.”

“It goes the same with the coffee. We didn’t just throw our name on it, and it’s been tasted, approved and we really stand by it,” Stever adds. “Being that it was during the middle of the pandemic, what better time to release something like this because we weren’t going out and doing shows? We centered on creating something that we could still interact with our fans and discuss with. We didn’t want to sit still and being that we love coffee it made total sense.”

While being completely mum on the status of the next Coheed & Cambria album, Stever is really excited to perform live in front of fans after such a long time. He’s also excited to come back to Massachusetts after spending a lot of time here during the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

“We’ve been working on this live set that has a lot of special surprises,” he says. “I can’t give a lot away with the upcoming album, but I will tell you that it’s pretty far along. There is no set release date and there is a title but I can’t release that information yet. It’s so exciting to have something ready and have numerous things ready to be able to give to the people who have been so dedicated to us as a band, and it’ll all happen in due time. What I’m excited about more than anything is this super special live set because it’s been almost two years since we’ve been able to do this.

“I have a new love for Massachusetts now because my family decided to head to Cape Cod during the pandemic when so many things were closed down and there was so much price gouging at the places we would usually go to,” Stever adds. “I used to go there when I was a kid and we wound up going to Manomet Beach in Plymouth and staying there for the summer. I literally fell in love with that area, I’ve met people that I’m hoping will be coming to the show at The Palladium and I can’t wait to come back and play.”