Claudio Sanchez, lead singer and guitarist of New Jersey-based Coheed and Cambria, revealed that while his wife and himself were living abroad, their country home that they were renting out had been used in what is suspected to have been a large marijuana grow operation. Metal Hammer reports that Sanchez and his wife Chondra Echert were planning on moving back home to the house they were renting out, when things began to take a strange and unfortunate legal turn for the couple

“In anticipating his birth we were contemplating moving back to the country house. It was time for us to do the yearly inspection but it kept getting put off.”

“My wife got a text from the renters, saying the house had been broken into. We thought it was odd so we called the police. They said no one had been living in the house – but they suspected it had been turned into a cannabis farm.”

“There was no real evidence aside from the smell and the residue, but they thought it was a $300,000-a-month operation.”

On the actual writing of the album:

“I was having a hard time honing in on the conceptual writing. I was starting to write more personally. I started to ponder the idea of releasing it as a solo record because it didn’t fall into the confines of a Coheed record… The anticipation of being a father spilled into the songwriting, and I didn’t want to cloud that with a blanket of fiction.”

While you wait for their upcoming October 8th release, The Color Before the Sun, check out the pop rock anthem they release from it that I am dedicating to my high school self. The album may be their first non-concept album, but if the songs are nearly as good as this, than I don’t think that will be too hard to overlook that minor flaw.