Review:

on 2011-10-29 CharlesMartel Said:

Quite often I find that bands who produce a series of long tracks do so because they lack sufficient melodies or ideas to fill an album with shorter tracks. Listening to "Colours" does nothing to dispel this feeling. Between the Buried and Me have managed to combine metal and prog-rock in a way which, once unique, now is becoming rather cliched and uninteresting. I guess it is not really their fault, but at times this album drags so much it feels as if it is tired of hauling itself up off the floor for one - last - time.

What melodies there are, are OK. There are some good riffs and the sort of thumping, resounding drumming you would expect. But if you were expecting more then you may find yourself disappointed. The melodies and riffs would suggest that the band have enough there to make a go of things, but they never venture out of that prog-rock propensity to ramble on long after a track should have closed out. Yet any aspirations to technicality and virtuosity are limited by the fact that the band simply do not have it. This is a prog-rock album which chugs.

In the end, this is neither technical nor that progressive, the length of the tracks apart. The band seem to have decided on their own unique sound, and in this case uniqueness means being dull and pedestrian. Sweep picking on guitar may sound good occasionally, but not when the technique is repeated on almost every single riff on the album. It may impress teenagers and people who have no ability when it comes to playing a guitar, but it is little more than accentuated arpeggios and quickly becomes tiresome. It is a technique invented for jazz and somehow Between the Buried and Me have decided that its rightful place is in prog-metal.

This is an album which will appeal to the mass of fourteen year old metal fans who think it is clever without actually realising that it simplicity dressed up as smart. But it is little more than run-of-the-mill modern metal which explores no new ground and recovers old ground in a manner which is uninspiring and uninteresting. Quite how this has become regarded, in metal circles, as something of a masterpiece, I do not know. There is much better than this out there and it this is not worth the price of the CD. This was given to me as a gift and I would have felt pretty irritated if I had actually bought it myself.
Rating: 2/10

Review:

on 2008-08-20 Zarathustra Said:

Where to start with Between The Buried and Me. This is an EPIC album, the diversity among the songs is simply amazing, it shows that prog doesn't have to pussyfoot around, that it can be brutal and make you smash your head into the wall because that scream was so damn awesome!

Tommy Rogers, can bellow. He's like a giant set of belows with vocal chords attached. You'll listen to him roar like a wounded bear, only to come around and sing the most beautiful choruses and sing them well, add to that his keyboard playing and you have an excellent frontman. Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring bring up the guitar end with astounding complexity and accuracy. The accuracy required to hit all those harmonics in Foam Born: The Decade of Statues at about 3 minuets is just mind blowing. Blake Richardson brings in drums that are both complicated, accurate and appropriate, as in you can easily hear them throughout the songs, but they're not overpowering anything else. Dan Briggs we all know as the bassist making up those crazy bass lines, you know the ones, the ones people need to shove a camera near his hands at shows so they can figure out what he's playing.

Bring together all this talent, with some of the best music I've ever seen or heard and you've got one hell of a band and one hell of an album, if you like Between the Buried and Me or heavy metal with jazz, pop, bluegrass and probably just about everything you can imagine thrown into the mix, buy this album right now, yeah that's right go out and buy it.
Rating: 10/10