USA - For the recent US leg of Coheed and Cambria's 2025 tour, lighting designer Ben Jarrett of Squeek Lights crafted a visual feast using Elation’s award-winning Paragon moving head as his primary spot fixture.
The Paragon M played a central role in shaping the visuals while supporting the band’s Amory Wars narrative, including the dramatic lighting of a full-sized inflatable character on stage. New Jersey-based Squeek Lights, a one-stop shop for stage lighting in the area, provided all lighting, video, and rigging for the tour.
The co-headlining tour with Mastodon, which ran from early May to 8 June, showcased 34 Paragon M fixtures – 24 mounted in two striking three-stick chevron truss arrays over the stage, and 10 on the downstage truss for frontlight.
“They’ve been amazing,” said LD Jarrett, who fulfilled a number of roles on the tour. “No issues at all. It’s a great little light – small enough to fit cleanly into GT truss and powerful enough to cut through a full video wall with ease.”
The designer tapped into the Paragon’s multi-functionality, using the fixtures as spots, gobo projectors, and mid-air beam lights. He praises the fixture’s 37,000-lumen output, high build quality, and IP54 rating. “It’s very bright – we’re getting more output than a 1000W discharge fixture. We’ve been indoors, outdoors, and in dusty fields – six weeks in, and they’ve handled it all.”
Jarrett’s design supports both Coheed’s storytelling and the high-energy concert experience. The production includes Blind Side Sonny, a towering inflatable character with spiked armour and illuminated eyes central to The Amory Wars, the sci-fi epic penned by frontman Claudio Sanchez that fuels the band’s music. Jarrett uses the Paragon’s dual rotating gobo wheels, animation wheel, and advanced framing shutters to highlight Sonny with animated lightplay, while avoiding spill on the 20ft h x 40ft w LED wall behind him.
“Sonny is as important to light as the lead singer,” the designer says, adding that he designed the entire rig around it. The inflatable reaches 28ft high and sits centre stage beneath a chevron of Paragons that can illuminate it from any angle. “Having the full suite of gobo and animation tools gives me the flexibility to bring him to life,” he adds.
Coheed and Cambria weave an imaginative tale across multiple albums through mythical storytelling and hard-driving music. Jarrett explains that Coheed and Cambria’s songs take place inside of an epic sci-fi world, each album another chapter in an ever-evolving story. When playing live, that story is echoed on stage with atmospheric lighting, LED graphics and full-size set pieces that help build a universe around the music.
The lighting design occasionally ties directly into The Amory Wars narrative. For example, Jarrett colours one classic track, Everything Evil, in hues of yellowish green that recall its 2002 album art. Still, he notes that the overall design is more about creating atmosphere and impact, providing a dynamic backdrop to the band’s latest studio album The Father of Make Believe, released in March.
Squeek Lights was among the first US rental houses to invest in the series, recognising the fixture's potential early on. “Paragon really checked all the boxes for us,” says Squeek Lights managing partner Victor Zeiser. “It’s an extraordinary fixture. It includes a number of cutting-edge features and its versatility as a multi-purpose light is very attractive. It does everything we need it to.”
In addition to the Paragons, the Coheed rig features 32 Elation Cuepix 16IP blinders lining each truss. Mastodon’s opening set is supported with a separate package that includes Elation SŌL I Blinders designed by LD Eric Price.
As Coheed and Cambria prepare to extend the tour through Europe and into a summer leg with Taking Back Sunday, the LD confirms he’ll continue using the same Paragon setup.
