Not many bands live up to the power and innovation of their first albums.

Few are able to maintain their originality and improve their music with incredible melodies and powerful riffs. The new two-disc album (the second disc contains music videos from singles off the first CD), In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, from the ever-great Coheed and Cambria, falls slightly short in keeping up with its predecessor.

The band’s most recent effort contains amazingly catchy songs, strong, evocative lyrics and lead singer Claudio Sanchez’s vocals, which are widely known for their uniquely high range. But this album fails to overcome the potency and inimitability of their first album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade.

The band seems to have adapted more of a poppy approach to this album. One can hear clapping-along-with-the-beat during the sixth track, “Blood Red Summer,” and more refrains and back-up vocals by Sanchez on a majority of the tracks throughout the album.

The album should not entirely disappoint fans who truly enjoyed the previous one, as the lyrics range from positive to progressively darker and mysterious with flippant twists, which tend to draw attention to Sanchez’s symbolic approach to writing. There are powerful lyrics and melodies similar to those heard on Second Stage’s “Junesong Provision,” and the album is far from being a failure. Also, the musical content of some of the songs is advanced, which is similar to the old material, such as the tracks, “The Crowing,” and “Three Evils: Embodied in Love and Shadow.”

Finally, the album does not go without the legendary reference to the “Newo That I Love.” As heard on Coheed’s previous album, as well as in songs from the days when the band was known as Shabutie, Sanchez’s obsession with the character “Newo,” who is supposedly his former love, is evident. Claudio continues his song writing based upon the sci-fi storyline about two characters named Coheed and Cambria and maintains this idea throughout this album, like in Second Stage Turbine Blade.

There is evidence of creativity and style in In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, but the band does not enhance its music, and the expectation of its album to exceed the remarkable influence of their first is not fulfilled. Nevertheless, this album is worth buying, and the style is still essentially original. Just don’t expect it to surpass the first, because no one, not even Coheed and Cambria themselves, can do the first album justice.