Between the Buried and Me's Future
A Look at the Innovative Band's Material in Expecting What's to Come
Aug 17, 2008
In terms on what genre the band's music falls under, North Carolina's Between the Buried and Me have been called countless things; indeed, incorporating elements of death metal, power metal, progressive rock, and even jazz and mainstream rock, while also displaying influences from sub-genres with trendy compound terms such as 'metalcore,' 'mathcore,' and 'loud,' is a musical feat impressive enough.
Emulating such a wide range of influences while keeping it's music a cohesive whole is an even greater accomplishment (not to mention the band has managed to knock this writer off his high horse of elitist disdain for the genres ending with '-core,' at least in the case of this band).
Between the Buried and Me has not always sounded as it does now, but it's music has always exhibited the prowess of any good technical metal or mathcore band, though also the impressive flexibility to tone down it's music into quiet melodic passages, which is a far less common trait.
The band's music follows the strong sensibility of not over-exploiting it's ability to pummel a listener throughout the entirety of an album, instead choosing to musically turn things on their head and only pummel the listener for a percentage of the time.
The Past - Self-Titled and The Silent Circus
With it's 2002 debut studio album Between the Buried and Me, the band lays the foundation of what's to come. Though more raw, rougher, and a bit more toward the '-core' side of things, the band displays it's advanced understanding of the technicality of heavy music, which is in itself a striking feature of the album considering it represents their debut effort.
Plus, a listener is already amazed by the band's ascension from the depths of grinding heaviness into moments of jazz interludes and extended passages of slow melodic meanderance, both of them heard in the album's closer "Shevanel Cut a Flip."
It is in 2003's The Silent Circus that displays a more refined taste of the band's musical attack. Though heavy as ever, with a math-meets-music style of aural experimentation permeating the work, the band further fleshes out its ability to please on the opposite end of the musical spectrum with the acoustic "Sheval Take Two" and the hauntingly ambient "Reaction."
The highpoint of the album, however, is "Mordecai," a song that both marks the true direction in which the band is heading musically as well as remaining to this day among the greatest of the band's songs.
Alaska and Colors - The Modern Era of BtBaM
It can be said that the truly modern era of Between the Buried and Me's music comes with their 2005 album Alaska. Featuring many more of the powerful, sweeping moments first and powerfully introduced in "Modecai," Alaska makes the band's most accessible album up to that point.
Though suffering from a bit on impenetrability toward the album's tail end, despite containing the anthemic "The Primer" and the elevator-music piece "Laser Speed," Alaska served as an unignorable and powerful release, but a mere smirking hint of what was to come.
With the 2007 release of Colors, Between the Buried and Me further refines the modern era of their music to a moving, overwhelmingly melodic and epic level. Colors, while showing even more varied influences than the band's impressive 2006 cover album The Anatomy Of, is the band's first universally listenable album.
Essentially a single hour-length musical piece divided into movements, Colors is populated by melodies that soar higher than angels and technicality more akin to death metal stylings that reach beyond any of their previous work. Featuring the band's first lineup to track two consecutive albums together, Between the Buried and Me's cohesion as a musical force is advanced and solidified by Colors.
The Future of BtBam
If the exponential increases in the power of it's music in the past is any indication of the what the future will bring from Between the Buried and Me, it can be expected that fans and lovers of any music have great things to await from this band within the next few years.
