Between the Buried and Me

[Dedalus]

As I mentioned in another thread, I listened to Colors a couple of times years ago and didn't like it. And I like Opeth (yes, all eras). My feeling with BTBAM is that it was an ultra technical extreme metal band....and this. I was never curious to listen to another record.

But it's been so long....

I will follow up on what TAC has to say. Suddenly I am also encouraged to venture into the band's work.

[TAC]

I will follow up on what TAC has to say. Suddenly I am also encouraged to venture into the band's work.

Alright! Let's do this!!

[ariich]

I unironically love the debut. The fact that they recorded it live makes it really raw in a way that I find very appealing, and I wish Tommy still had as much variety in his harsh vocals as he did on the early albums.

That said I can't imagine TAC will like it.

Really glad to see you man, I've been missing you.

And yeah I can't believe TAC is going to start from the beginning despite everyone's warnings.

[TAC]

I don't know guys, this first track, More Of Myself To Kill is AWESOME!!!! I mean the harsh vocals are ....harsh.

But besides that, the music is great. Don't forget my favorite Metallica album is Kill 'Em All.

[Revenge319]

I don't know guys, this first track, More Of Myself To Kill is AWESOME!!!! I mean the harsh vocals are ....harsh.

But besides that, the music is great. Don't forget my favorite Metallica album is Kill 'Em All.

I haven't listened to their self-titled album much, but I agree that More of Myself to Kill is an awesome song and I return to that one quite a bit.

[wolfking]

Honestly, I don't remember much from the debut at all.

[fadetoblackdude7]

Yeah I’m with everyone that despite these guys being one of my top favorite bands, the first 3 records don’t mean much to me, although I respect them. They just became something else with Colors.

[TAC]

The last minute of Aspiriations is incredible.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

The last minute of Aspiriations is incredible.

You aren't wrong. Note, I didn't say the first 3 albums aren't good, because I love them. But I just figured a good jumping off point for you would be Colors. At any rate, I'm happy you are finding stuff to like in the first album so far.

BtBaM is one of those bands that got exponentially better with every album up to and including The Great Misdirect. They kind of plateaued with the Parallax EP and Parallax II, then dipped a bit in quality (although still good) with Coma Ecliptic and Automata. Then there's Colors II which I feel is another massive jump in quality.

So in retrospect, I think you starting at the beginning is the best thing you can do to get a real appreciation for what the band has done and how they progressed. 

[TAC]

So in retrospect, I think you starting at the beginning is the best thing you can do to get a real appreciation for what the band has done and how they progressed. 

Well, that's the idea!



The guitars at :59 of Fire For A Dry Mouth are very cool.
Speaking of FFADM, 4:52 on is incredible.
Also, the solo at 5:31 reminds me of JR's & JP's solo at 3:38 of The Gift Of Music.

[wolfking]

I'll have to revisit it. 

Knowing Tim, he'll probably love the first 3 albums and hate everything afterwards! 

[TAC]

I'll have to revisit it. 

Knowing Tim, he'll probably love the first 3 albums and hate everything afterwards! 

   


Naked by a computer is pretty nice. Oh, and the song is pretty good too.



2:31 of Use Of A Weapon...so Iron Maiden. At 4:17 too.

[wolfking]

Alright, I just found my copy of the debut and its getting a run on the way to work today.  Shit, that reminds me I'm running late!!

[TAC]

Have a good day!

[wolfking]

Have a good day!

Thanks bud.  Things starting to ramp up, getting busier.  Not cool haha.

I'll post later my thoughts on this album.

[wolfking]

I took the long way to work cause I was late anyway and got through the album.  I thought it was fantastic.  Not sure why I never revisited it.  It's not that much of a stretch from their later stuff and I love what Tommy is doing with his vocals in places here, lots of variety.

Aspirations probably my fav on that listen, that song is class.

[TAC]

A bit disappointed with the 9 minute closer, Shevanel Cut A Flip. The first 3:21 fucking blows, but after that it's quite nice.


OK, finished the first album. Those vocals are horrendous I must say. But musically, it's all kinds of awesome. Love the energy and the rawness of it. The production is nice. The instruments sound real organic.





On to The Silent Circus. Nice that there's only a year between releases.

[TAC]

Lost Perfection A. Coulrophobia- Goddamn, the vocals are awful Why??? The groove at 3:21 is  .

B. Anablephobia- Love the drum intro. Nice snare sound here. This is three minutes of fucking metal.

Camilla Rhodes-These vocals are going to be a hurdle going forward I think. They really overpower the music and smother the intricacies of the playing. I like it at 1:55, but it's false hope because what I thought was a nice part incoming devolved into more blastscreamobeats.

Mordecai-WTF kind of opening is this? The rest of the song is really good, but that's only if you can survive the first 1:40 of it. Really nice solo at 4:12 to take the song out. Beautiful.

Reaction- The should've called this Ear Cleansing.

Shevanel Take 2. WTF happened to the album I was listening too??

Ad A Dglgmut- Um..Found it! This shit is punky as hell. I can't believe I'm wishing for Billy Milano.
I love the guitars under the vocals at 2:38. Really cool groove. 3:11 damn fine. 4:29 No, it doesn't make sense, but I'll take it. 5:52 OK here we go.

Destructo Spin- 3:30-4:02 that's all this song has. Everything else feels redundant and forgettable.

Aesthetic-Some freaking awesome playing in this one. Should've been an instrumental.

The Sound Of Repetition-I'm liking this so far. It's not overpowering me with the vocals. The riff at 2:37 (I think they played it earlier in the song) reminds my of Rush's Time And Motion.
OK, who turned out the lights?
Interesting ending. You're all what?  We're all what?
Ugh..that was disappointing.





OK, I'm easily taking the first album. It just felt like there was a little more variety. Too many spots on The Silent Circus felt repetitive.
The final epic, The Sound Of Repetition was really doing quite well. I was loving it over the first album's epic, Svevanel Cut A Flip. But then the song disappears and returns after a few minutes of silence into something fucking useless.




I cannot put my ears through the third album tonight.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

So interesting tidbit. The song All Bodies, from the album Alaska, was my introduction to BtBaM and my introduction to harsh vocals that I listened to willingly. This was back when the album first came out. At first I hated the vocals and struggled with them. However, once that little barbershop quartet moment came in towards the end of the song I was hooked.

These days the vocals I feel add to the music more than detract. That's just me though. I think Tommy's vocals were the best on Alaska and Colors.

Found a picture of Tim listening to Between the Buried and Me

[jammindude]

 

I’ve never even heard the first two because most people have said that they were pretty much straight forward metalcore, and I kinda feel like I was done with that whole scene in the 90s. I listed to a lot of that kind of stuff, and it didn’t have a lot of variety to it. After glutting on the whole genre for several years, I decided I hated it. It made me rage too much and it felt very “stuck in a rut”

I only got into Colors because of how very different it is. I think most people agree that it was a big game changer for the entire scene and I can see why. I also think Alaska has a lot going on for it as well, but most people have said that if I only like those because of how different they are, I probably wouldn’t like the first two, so I never bothered.

EDIT - and full disclosure, while I love Alaska and Colors, I feel the band has only improved as they’ve matured and become more structured. Parallax 1/2 and Automata 1/2 are my favorites. I haven’t heard Colors 2 yet…I’m waiting for my physical copy. Hopefully it will arrive next week.

[Dedalus]

I listened to the first album. The vocals are extraordinarily horrible. I have the impression that if you removed the vocalist 100% improvement.

At times the songs change their direction so suddenly that it's funny. It seems they wrote about five songs, chopped and pasted the snippets.

First song, not good.

Arsonist is better, reminds me of black metal... a little bit.

TAC is right, the end of Aspirations is cool.

FFADM - the beginning also looks like Black Metal. The vocal reminds me of Cannibal Corpse (where's Alex Webster?). This is the worst of all... Suddenly the horrible song was even interesting at the end 

NBTC - It start calmly and then a great riff  . All the transitions in this song are abrupt and forced, but that seems to be what they were looking for. An absolutely horrendous clean vocal at the end.

Despite everything the bass is great (on all songs).

I arrived to the Iron Maiden part that TAC mentioned in Use of a Weapon. This song has some cool parts (in the middle of the sound mess), eg the last riff.

The 9-minute epic. There's a party going on, it seems. The bass is excellent, again! A hell of a riff around 2:40  . A clean vocal again. Really bad.
The part with the clean guitar isn't bad, but it's not wonderful either.
It's over, phew.

They are great musicians and for what they were trying to do I think they did the best they could.
But it's really bad. I remember not liking Colors mainly because of the vocals, but I don't remember finding the music as bad as here. There's maybe a good 20 minutes buried in this mess.

It was the worst thing I heard in 2021, easily.

I don't know if I'll listen to the others albums...   

[Zantera]

Instead of forcing yourself through albums you know you wont like, why not just cut to the chase and sample the ones that others think there's a higher chance you would like? Aka the proggier albums.

[Dedalus]

Instead of forcing yourself through albums you know you wont like, why not just cut to the chase and sample the ones that others think there's a higher chance you would like? Aka the proggier albums.

It hadn't even crossed my mind to listen to the band. I ended up going in the wake of TAC's excitement. 

But it's good advice.

[me7]

Instead of forcing yourself through albums you know you wont like, why not just cut to the chase and sample the ones that others think there's a higher chance you would like? Aka the proggier albums.

It hadn't even crossed my mind to listen to the band. I ended up going in the wake of TAC's excitement. 

But it's good advice.

From your remarks, you should listen to Coma Ecliptic first.

[Elite]

Thanks to TAC I listened to the debut for the first time in ages in the car this morning. I thought it was enjoyable, and better than I remembered. The first and last tracks are the highlights, I think.

Next up: The Silent Circus. 'Mordecai' is one of the songs that originally got me into harsh vocals, believe it or not. I remember watching the videoclip and thinking I shouldn't like it, because it was noise. Opeth's 'The Drapery Falls' later pulled me in.

I actually know Alaska very well, because that's a record I occasionally listen to still. Some really good stuff on that one!

[wolfking]

I absolutely love that first minute and a half of Mordecai.  The contrast also in the second half is tremendous.

[Buddyhunter1]

The ending of Mordecai is great but I've always thought of that song as a less-good version of Selkies. I don't really get the hype behind it.

[Dedalus]

Instead of forcing yourself through albums you know you wont like, why not just cut to the chase and sample the ones that others think there's a higher chance you would like? Aka the proggier albums.

It hadn't even crossed my mind to listen to the band. I ended up going in the wake of TAC's excitement. 

But it's good advice.

From your remarks, you should listen to Coma Ecliptic first.

Thanks.
I'm going to take the advice and go straight to this album.

[hefdaddy42]

I love Coma Ecliptic.  Sometimes I think it's my favorite BTBAM album.

[Dedalus]

I started listening to Coma Ecliptic. It probably shouldn't because I can't go on now. 

Anyway, it doesn't even look like the same band. 

It's much better, really. Felt influences from Mars Volta perhaps?

I listened to Node, The Coma Machine and Dim Ignition. All are nice, but the third is the best. I liked the keyboards. 

And the vocals improved 1000000000000000000000000000000%. I checked out on the wiki and it's the same guy! Wow!

I will continue later.

[jammindude]

I remember when CE was released, someone said it sounded like Between the Buried and Queen Theater and I always thought that was funny.

[Zantera]

I know BTBAM covered Bohemian Rhapsody when I saw them tour for.. Parallax (?) and I honestly felt a lot of those Queen influences on Coma Ecliptic. Coma Ecliptic feels like them trying to do a big grandiose rock opera album and even though I know a lot of fans were mixed on it, for me personally I highly enjoyed it. In terms of Dream Theater comparisons I think The Great Misdirect for me personally probably hits the closest. It has more harsh vocals than Coma Ecliptic but something about the sound/production as well as the guitars on that album feel very DT influenced.

[Elite]

The Great Misdirect is awesome and Swim to the Moon is my favourite BTBAM track. Epic closer to a fantastic album.

[Buddyhunter1]

Funnily enough I remember this forum being pretty divided on TGM back when I first joined around 2010/2011 and now it's pretty widely considered to be one of their best.

[Crow]

swim to the moon might be my least favorite on TGM, which is just a fantastic record front-to-back and unquestionably their best

i've only spun colors II once bcuz i'm waiting on the CD, which isn't releasing until october so i'mma be waiting a bit longer