The Afterman

The Afterman: Ascension is the first half of a double album, the second part being The Afterman: Descension, which was released the following year. The two records tell the story of Sirius Amory, a scientist who discovers an energy force holding together the Keywork (the 78 planets in which the Amory Wars is set) and finds that it is in fact a horrible afterlife for departed souls. "A lot of the songs are just really a recount of the things that I had gone through in the past two years," frontman Claudio Sanchez told Billboard magazine.

The storyline for the album only really came together after Sanchez started writing this song. "My wife and I spent a day on a boat, and our cell reception was pretty poor," Sanchez explained to Billboard. "And when we got home, she had discovered on Facebook that a good friend of hers had passed away. And I had never witnessed anything like that before - this impersonal way to discover that you had lost somebody. And that moment kind of inspired me."

When we spoke with Coheed and Cambria guitarist Travis Stever, he explained: "'Afterman' started when his wife Chondra found out that a good friend of hers had died. She found out from the Internet. And that's basically the longing to be able to talk to that person and find out what happened to them after this."