Claudio Sanchez's first Prize Fighter Inferno album in 15 years out this week + hear "Rock Bottom"
Last year, Coheed & Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez reactivated his folktronica solo project The Prize Fighter Inferno for his first new music in eight years, the Stray Bullets EP, and now he’s gearing up for a new album, The City Introvert, the project’s first full-length since his 2006 debut My Brother’s Blood Machine. It’s due this Friday (4/23) via Evil Ink Records (pre-order).
According to a press release, Claudio began writing the album “in March 2020 when [his] grandfather fell ill and simultaneously, his wife began battling an auto-immune disease. This meant that any potential exposure to the coronavirus could have deadly consequences at home, making a brief goodbye to his ailing grandfather unlikely. Sanchez found himself coping with the darkness and uncertainty the only way he knew how—writing. The result is reviving a rare, introspective solo project with 10-track LP.”
The EP includes all four original songs from the Stray Bullets EP (everything except the “Stand By Me” cover), as well as recent single “Sweet Talker” and the brand new “Rock Bottom.” “‘Rock Bottom’ is a crossroad of emotions,” Claudio tells us, “where I relive the strange circumstances that surrounded losing my grandfather during the pandemic and the curiosity of having to live the remainder of my life without my wife.” It’s a devastating song, and Claudio conveys its message with an intimate, auto-tune-fueled delivery in the vein of Bon Iver’s “Woods.”
The black-and-white video (directed by Jenny He and starring Edward Brence) takes place in NYC and it plays off the same emotions that are present in Claudio’s lyrics. That video premieres in this post, and you can watch it right here:
Also listen to “Sweet Talker” and stream the Stray Bullets EP:
 
Tracklist
01. More Than Love
02. Death Rattle
03. Crazy for You
04. Stray Bullets
05. Rock Bottom
06. Holiday Fool
07. Sweet Talker
08. Roll for Initiative
09. She’s the Brains, My Sweetheart
10. Stay Where You Are
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15 Albums That Shaped Progressive Post-Hardcore in the 2000s
The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003)
Coheed & Cambria – In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (2003)
These Arms Are Snakes – Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home (2004)
The Sound of Animals Fighting – Tiger and the Duke (2005)
The Receiving End of Sirens – Between the Heart and the Synapse (2005)
Gospel – The Moon Is A Cold Dead World (2005)
The Number Twelve Looks Like You – Nuclear. Sad. Nuclear (2005)
The Fall of Troy – Doppelgänger (2005)
Protest The Hero – Kezia (2005)
Fear Before The March of Flames – The Always Open Mouth (2006)
Damiera – M(US)IC (2007)
Circa Survive – On Letting Go (2007)
Dance Gavin Dance – Dance Gavin Dance (2008)
2000s progressive post-hardcore was kind of the result of a bunch of different post-hardcore bands trying their hands at progressive rock all at once. A lot of these bands ended up collaborating and touring together, but it took a few years for this to seem like a coherent subgenre. When the next wave of progressive post-hardcore bands cropped up at the turn of the 2010s, they very much had a specific shared sound in mind. That sound got dubbed "swancore," and the person who coined it was Dance Gavin Dance guitarist (and Blue Swan Records founder) Will Swan. Dance Gavin Dance served as the direct bridge between the early 2000s bands and the 2010s bands (many of whom were signed to Blue Swan). They took the influence of a lot of the earlier bands on this list and they bottled it up and stirred it around until it sounded like an accessible blend of just about all of them. Their self-titled sophomore LP is their second album and first with clean vocalist Kurt Travis (who would go on to front A Lot Like Birds and also has a band with The Fall of Troy frontman Thomas Erak, among many other projects), following their 2007 debut with now-controversial vocalist Jonny Craig. Kurt's a real wailer who can sometimes sound like a cross between Anthony Green and Casey Crescenzo, and Will Swan's mind-melting riffage exists somewhere in the middle ground between The Fall of Troy and The Mars Volta. Sometimes prog bands get a little too polished, and DGD definitely flirt with the cleaner side of the genre, but they keep things gnarly thanks to screamer Jon Mess, who clearly learned his screaming chops from '90s screamo and splits vocal duties almost 50/50 with Kurt on this LP. (They also had some guest vocalists on this album, including none other than Deftones frontman Chino Moreno.) When this album first came out, it might've seemed like a product of its influences, but at this point, DGD have become a highly influential (and long-lasting and consistent) band themselves, and this decade-plus-old sophomore LP still holds up.
Exclusive, limited Dance Gavin Dance vinyl variants available in our shop.