The Prize Fighter Inferno

The Prize Fighter Inferno is an acoustic/electronica solo project of Claudio Sanchez, the lead singer and lead/rhythm guitarist for the band Coheed and Cambria. The music has featured several acts related to the band such as, Chondra Echert of Chonny & Clyde, Travis Stever of Davenport Cabinet, and Josh Eppard of Weerd Science. It was signed with Equal Vision Records but is currently signed with Evil Ink Records.

The project is often shortened to the simple acronym PFI.

History
Just before Shabütie became Coheed and Cambria, Sanchez began developing his concept, which became the world of The Amory Wars. Initially intended to stay a side project, Sanchez wanted the project to focus on an acoustic/electronic sound. After the band decided they liked the idea of being focused on the concept as a whole, and renamed, Sanchez continued playing with the different type of music.

Mostly a tinkering hobby, a story of its own did developed from it: after Inferno's death in The Amory Wars, he finds himself in our world, present day. He wants to tell the story of The Amory Wars, but feels that he has to tell the story of the Blood Machine first. He has also used the project to create music for other projects, like Kill Audio, Kid Crazy and the Killowatt King (he was directly credited as himself in the latter), and as a more personal outlet like with the Half Measures EP and The City Introvert album.

Musical Style
Asked about the music, Sanchez has said, "Side projects should be very left field. I love folk music and singer/songwriters, and I very much like sequencing and digital electronic music, so I just figured ‘why not?’" Consequence of Sound said of his newer songs, "a neon-lined jam that calls to mind the melodrama of early-aughts emo pop," and also, "dark trip-hop electronica."

Sanchez has featured other artists in small ways in the project. These include:


 * Travis Stever playing lap steel in "Wayne Andrews, The Old Bee Keeper"
 * Josh Eppard rapping on in "Stray Bullets"
 * Chondra Echert singing in "Erizo Schultz"
 * And samples of his son, Atlas, on "Crazy For You"
 * Echert and Atlas were also sampled on "Sweet Talker"

Concepts
Though the first album project was highly conceptual, not all media released through it are believed to be conceptual. For example, the Beaver Records EP was specifically released with the fourth volume of Evil Ink's Kill Audio comic. The Half Measures EP was released at New York ComicCon in 2012, and features a lot of nods to famous horror films. The second album project was very much an outlet during the Covid-19 Pandemic, so it seems that as a side project, Sanchez could very well just be having fun.

Unofficial Demos
In 2004, a leaked recording of several In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 acoustic demos made their way to several P2P networks. Among these were a few Prize Fighter Inferno demos, including a cover of the song "Your Love" by The Outfield. The two others were "Blood Machine" and "Run Like Hell", the latter of which has been argued to be a Coheed and Cambria demo rather than a PFI one.

Lastly, on December 5th, 2008 on the second night of the London Neverender tour, Sanchez played a new song titled "The Echo Maker" which was originally written for a musical called Rosie Barbara and the Family Massacre that he and his wife were working on at the time. In a Reddit AMA, Sanchez shared that he'd "fallen asleep" on the project, but that the ideas were still in his "mind locker."

Trivia

 * The symbol for the project is The Eye of Providence. This is interesting because this symbol represents the all-seeing eye of God full of power and wisdom and control over his own world.