“While I was in the pandemic […] I had started to toy around with this instrument I purchased called an Apprehension Engine.” Claudio Sanchez says from his home recording studio. “It’s typically this scary, nightmare instrument. I had started to fool around with this instrument and it started giving me these ideas about what the Blood Machine story would look like.” Sanchez has been a staple of the music scene since the early 00s, fronting the band Coheed & Cambria as well as taking time for his solo project The Prize Fighter Inferno. But for nearly as long, he has been involved in adapting his music into the medium of comics.
This December, Sanchez, alongside Steve Niles and Andrew Richie, bring My Brother’s Blood Machine to comic shops around the world. This six issue mini series from Evil Ink promises to birth “a new era of slasher horror” centered around the ramshackle Blood Machine, an apprehension engine of its own, built to separate the soul from the body. The story is raw, creepy and the construction of elements that are as much for a Frankenstein as the album itself.
The work of Coheed & Cambria is largely centered around giant sci-fi epics, albums with grandiose titles like Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness. Songs like “Welcome Home” and “A Favor House Atlantic” were staples of the Warped Tour scene in the mid 00s. At the time, Claudio had ideas that didn’t quite fit Coheed’s style, but he still wanted to get them out into the world. “It was stuff that was floating around on cassette four-tracks. It was so disjointed and disconnected” he says “and it was in that, I found the inspiration to create a story.” That story would be first told in 2006’s My Brother’s Blood Machine. Part acoustic folk, part electronica dance, part industrial experimentation and fully centered around a young woman’s flight from monsters, both home and away.
Those monsters fascinate Claudio. “I’ve started to find compassion in the misunderstood villain. Leatherface is one that is a big influence on me. When I see the character, it feels more like nurture versus nature. There was good in the character but because of the way the family brought him up he’s a massive killing machine.” There’s a crackling excitement in his voice, this passion for the grotesque. “One of the reasons I like the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is because they give you a little bit of that. He’s in this orphanage and he’s at bay because someone is actually caring for him. Once they took that away from him, we get the return of this demon. That’s what I want to tell in this horror tale. We have our slasher but it could be looked at a little different.”
As the quiet town of Margretville prepares for its annual Jubilee, gossip sets ears aflame about a missing person. Cecilia McCloud is desperate to escape, but Margretville isn’t the only place where monsters dwell. Just outside the village, the Bleam brothers prepare their infernal Blood Machine in a twisted design to free the souls of the people. It’s these villains like these that have always piqued Claudio’s interest.
In My Brother’s Blood Machine, that love for horror blends with another lifelong passion, comics. “I’d always been a [comics] fan as a kid.” Claudio mentions as he reminisces about wearing out his copy of the adaptation of Tim Burton’s Batman. “I was interning at a studio in Manhattan and there was another comic shop around the corner from Electric Lady [Studios]. Around that time is when I discovered The Walking Dead and Red Star and the Wolverine Origin comics. That resparked my interest in comics.” Cinematic art and the narrative ambition of titles like Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On A Serious Earth helped him understand what he could do with a medium that was maturing with him.
But comics aren’t a medium oft traveled alone. Joining Claudio to tell the tale of My Brother’s Blood Machine is 30 Days Of Night writer Steve Niles. “We had met before years ago in LA. Steve was good friends with a friend of mine, Pete Stahl who was the singer in a band called Scream. They had grew up together in a punk scene, Steve being part of a band called Gray Matter. We had gotten into this conversation about doing something at some point.” The pandemic gave them an opportunity to work together, and bring in new tallent. “I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever get the chance, but I guess that time we had to spend in lock down let it happen.”
Bringing the story to life is artist Andrew Richie, an illustrator with a unique style. “I want people to feel uneasy when reading the book.” Claudio says talking about the art. “During the pandemic, I joined a D&D campaign online. The other participants were tattoo artists and illustrators. One of the illustrators, Jared Cody Wolf who had done some illustrations for The Prize Fighter Inferno. He brought up Andrew Richie. I remember taking a look at it and it somehow reminded me of if Kurt Cobain had illustrated comics.” Claudio takes a beat, talking about Incesticide, the b-side and rarity collection Nirvana released with Kurt’s work adorning the album cover.
There was concern at the start. Richie’s style is haunting yes, but off putting in its intentionality. Claudio recalls the moment he knew this was the right fit. “I started talking to Andrew about potentially illustrating the book and he said ‘you’re not going to ask me to draw pretty are you?’” Nothing about Richie’s art feels right, in all the right ways.
It’s been sixteen years since the album My Brother’s Blood Machine was released. “When I had written that first record” Claudio remembers, “it was just a collection of ideas and me learning to be a songwriter.” There’s something to be said about aging, looking back at old idea’s with new eyes. “I don’t want it to feel so forced. You have to find a delicate balance between what is being heard and how that translates into a visual.” In life, things aren’t always pretty. They can be a lumbering mass of ideas and coincidences stitched together. But there’s a beauty growing in that mess, if you enter the Blood Machine, maybe your soul too can be released.
My Brother’s Blood Machine #1 hits comic shops and the Evil Ink store on 12/14/22. Find your local comic shop and pre-order with Diamond code OCT221630. An exclusive ashcan preview will be available at NYCC Booth 2937.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
