Bürgerhaus Stollwerck, Cologne, Germany11th October 2025
Coheed And Cambria - “Welcome To Forever Tour UK/Euro” - Support: Majuskel
The New York Progressive Rock band COHEED AND CAMBRIA has been releasing album after album at a rapid pace for over 20 years now, continuing the science fiction saga about the married couple Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon. Most recently, in spring 2025, the quartet released ‘Vaxis - Act III: The Father Of Make Believe’, the final part of the space-set story, and it is this album that is the focus of the band’s current tour, which brings them to Cologne’s sold-out Bürgerhaus Stollwerck on a late Saturday evening.
Majuskel
The support slot went to MAJUSKEL, a band from Münster that has not yet made much of a mark on the internet and is still at the very beginning of its career. The quintet does not yet have an album under its belt, but it has presented the track ‘Hippokrates’ on Instagram, which clearly shows that its sometimes explosive Emocore is even harder than the Rock music of JUPITER JONES, with which singer Nicholas Müller has been very successful since 2011, thanks in particular to the single release ‘Still’.
It is shortly after 9 p.m. when the band takes to the stage and serves up the first track, ‘Abramovic’. At this point, the sound still has a lot of room for improvement; it sounds a little undifferentiated, but you can sense immediately that the band is up for it. After mastering the song, singer Nicholas Müller admits that they are quite nervous and anxious about performing in front of a sold-out house, but then they appear relieved and relaxed when the audience responds to this (and ultimately the other songs) with appreciation and cheers.
MAJUSKEL performs a total of seven songs and is thoroughly convincing. We are excited to see where the quintet goes from here.
Setlist
01. Abramovic
02. Richard David Precht
03. Instrumental Jam
04. Magdalena Stoilova
05. Busby Berkely
06. Maximlian Krah
07. Hippokrates
Coheed And Cambria
It is now shortly before 10 p.m. when COHEED AND CAMBRIA finally take to the stage and perform the first of a total of 15 songs with ‘Goodbye, Sunshine’. It quickly becomes clear that the evening will not be a ‘best of’ performance, but that the band will focus their setlist on their latest studio album, ‘The Father Of Make Believe’. This is not a bad move, as the current album is definitely one of the strongest in the band’s history.
The audience seems satisfied with the song selection, celebrating the current songs such as the relentless ‘Blind Side Sonny’, the balladlike ‘Corner My Confidence’ (performed as the first song of the encore by singer Claudio Sanchez alone) and ‘The Flood’ / ‘Tethered Together’ from the concluding multi-part ‘The Continuum’ from the current album.
But it is, of course, the hits by COHEED AND CAMBRIA that really get the sold-out Bürgerhaus Stollwerck rocking, especially in the second half of the evening. ‘A Favour House Atlantic’ opens this final phase. Hearing ‘Good eye, sniper / I’ll shoot, you run’ sung by everyone in the audience has a very special charm. During this song, a fan who looks about 10 years old suddenly appears on stage after being hoisted over the railing by security and carried onto the stage.
A funny moment ensues because the band seems a little overwhelmed by the situation and it takes a few seconds before singer Claudia Sanchez presses her plectrum into his hand and holds the guitar for him so that the young fan can continue the band’s biggest hit in his own individual way. A similar situation arises a little later with ‘In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3’.
Once again, the entire audience passionately sings along to the chorus “Man your own jackhammer / Man your battle stations / We’ll have you dead pretty soon”, allowing the band to concentrate purely on playing their instruments. But now there are also crowd surfers who are carried to the photo pit every minute to make contact with the ground again.
Yes, it is of course the band’s old classics that elicit the most intense reaction from the audience. Nevertheless, the evening in Cologne shows that the newer material from the last two albums also contains treasures that need to be presented live. In fact, I would have liked to hear two or three more songs from ‘The Unheavenly Creatures’, which has been criminally neglected on this tour.
Setlist
01. Goodbye, Sunshine
02. Shoulders
03. Blood Red Summer
04. Blind Side Sonny
05. Everything Evil
06. Number City
07. The Suffering
08. Searching for Tomorrow
09. The Continuum II: The Flood
10. A Favor House Atlantic
11. The Liars Club
12. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
13. Corner My Confidence (Acoustic)
14. The Continuum III: Tethered Together
15. Welcome Home
All pictures by André Wilms
