Disco de Between the Buried and Me: “Colors”

I have to say that this album is the perfect album. Like the Beatles White Album, and Metallica's Black Album. We now get the greatest album of them all BTBAM "colors." Every single song on this album is amazing, and very well put together. I have been listening to BTBAM since Silent Circus, and it seems to me that instead of them becoming more "flowery," (as someone put on a recent review of the album) I am finding them becoming something more imaginable, intelligent, and put simply just amazing artist. I am stunned by this album, and I can not stop playing it. To give this album anything less than a five is shocking to me. You have to listen to it and understand it's pure genius. I recommend this album to anyone who respects music, and loves music from a progressive stance. Music is meant to evolve, not sit around like a bunch of retards like some of the most recent songs I hear today. SO give it a shot it's awesome.

This would be a 5 star except the only thing holding them back are the unremarkable growling vocals, and I happen to be a fan of this style if it's done right. They just seem so devoid of passion or even fluctuation and just keep droning on. Also, the blast beats are a little overdone in some areas, but other than that, this is a very solid release. The musicianship is amazing, complete with 180 degree turns into different realms including Radiohead, and jazz territories. Alternate vocals reminiscent of early Pink Floyd help add another flavor to the overall feel. Highly recommended for fans of Dillinger Escape Plan or if you are into the new school eclectic prog/punk/metal stuff.

You know, I only discovered this band very, very recently. I found a band I knew nothing about and took a risk. This is something I do once in a while. Often I get burned, once in a blue moon, I get lucky. When I snagged ALASKA I got very lucky. I soon returned for more from these guys, and then talk about LUCK ... a brand spanking new release a mere two weeks after I first find them. I must have been a very good boy lately. I only wish I would have found them long ago as the past few years have been missing something.

I don't want to try to get technical about this album. Make no mistake, it is a technical masterpiece and these guys are preposterously skillful musicians. But I don't want to get mired in a monologue on technicality. What you gotta love about these guys is that when you listen to different albums, there's a sense of progression, of evolution but still a constant identity. Above all else, the music is bloody heavy. It is the kind of music that'll do bad things to your pulse. Yet it's so soul shatteringly beautiful. The vocals are larynx shredding, the guitar is relentless, the drums are punishing and yet it doesn't feel cliched, it doesn't get boring ... and it's just plain gorgeous ... and quirky ... and intelligent.

And you listen to it and you think "aren't these guys supposed to put out a St. Anger by now? How far along are they in their career, didn't Korn start to get embarrassing when they were at this point?" But instead of softening in the name of "growth" they put out an album that is as merciless as ever. There is a sense of integrity to it. It's beautiful ... and ugly. It's perfect ... and wrong.

Please, do not wait for radio to introduce you to these guys. They never will. You know MTV wouldn't give this the time of day. Day in and day out we as a society do everything in our power to destroy music through our sheer complacency. Do your duty to be a better consumer of music and DISCOVER THIS BAND. Really, do you have anything better to do today? No you don't so go out to the store and buy it. Don't walk, don't run, FLY. Get a move on. Buy this!

Listen to "White Walls" or "Ants of the Sky" and you'll know what truly beautiful music is. The entire album is masterful, and is a showcase for true musical talent in its purest form. I've spent twenty years developing a love for musicians that are truly talented and know what their instruments are capable of. This album demonstrates such talent and realization. It is by far the best album in the metal genre that I have personally ever heard, speaking exclusively of technical complexity and talent. I have never heard so many complicated and spell binding riffs on one album, let alone one thirteen minute song. Listen to the album all the way through, and your ears will be eternally grateful.

I am very thankful for the day a kind fellow named Dr. Chandler who recommended this band to me several years back. From the beginning, with their remarkable self-titled album, Between the Buried and Me was basically the perfect band. Progressive in thought and deed, stunning instrumental proficiency, riveting emotional excitement, challenging on the long-term yet instantly compelling, amazing vocals, guitars and drumming. Such a masterful blending of features that it is immediately and timelessly absorbing. They play a unique, ultra-complex, blast-laden tech-metal with elements borrowed from many genres, for instance pop and jazz and biker-rock and radiohead-ish stuff, ethnic tunes, and some weirdness. They execute fast, clean changes with such precision and lack of pretension that a Naked City fan would have to respect them.

Classifying them is something of a disservice, they are the sort of "prog-metal" that is a sub-genre unto themselves, like recent tourmates Dream Theater and Opeth, or more obscure groups like maudlin of the Well, or even something like Meshuggah. They are good because their unique sound hit very powerful emotional and physical responses while other bands are singing a generic song. So to me Between the Buried and Me is already top-tier in their field, however one classifies it. But now _Colors_ comes along, an album so perfect and awesome that it makes their previous work seem so, I dunno, puny. this cranks the BtBaM power meter to above a million percent doing everything they've done before way better and then some. over the coming years this should go on all those "best metal albums" lists and such.

_Colors_ is all one epic song broken into tracks, and because it is so huge and the band rarely repeat themselves (and then always reorchestrated), it seems chaotic but it is not really. The themes and emotions are connected with something more epic and emotional than most prog-metal formalisms allow for. Definitely not chaotic. The way the band moves through build-and-release patterns of tension is fairly natural and conventional to the best of Western music. Is that their amazing power -- their music is so good that it has a physical force, like your body's cells are quaking ecstatically with the vibrations while you listen and pulling you along? It is so structurally riveting, the full 64 minutes so intense and awesome, you will feel guilty if you don't listen to it all in one sitting each time you put it on. I have no idea what the lyrics are about.

The album opens and closes with a pretty bit for solo piano. When the full band comes in though, you going to hear some of the best all out prog-metal intensity ever. Waggoner, Waring, Briggs and Richardson are gods together - the drumming is like extreme tech-death, mindblowing riffs and guitar heroics, solos and instrumental interludes of sheer emotional perfection and melodic genius. Their prog-metal is more metalcore based, but their songs change constantly, hitting everything in the metal spectrum and a lot more. They are unpredictable and their eclectic reach is heard in all kinds of ways, like the irish pub jig at the end of "Ants of the Sky", the moment of "Informal Gluttony" which sound like Mr. Bungle complete with weird Pattonite noises, a Tom Waits-esque interlude in "Prequel to the Sequel", or there's the intro to that song which make me think of space commandos, the shoegaze-pop moment midway through "Sum of Nothing", or the middle-eastern arrangement of the start of 3.

And while these moments are abundant and very well done, it is a mistake to think Between the Buried and Me's ingenuity comes only from their willingness to draw from unexpected sources. Anyone into prog-metal knows how these bands like to show off eclecticism at various opportunities. BtBaM is more about the underlying principle that guides these eclectic moments with a coherent universal quality present at all moments, no matter how superficially different. this music is extremely distinctive, and the overall sound is definitely like no other.

All these inflated descriptions and praises get tossed around a lot, especially by myself!, but this band is the real deal, I promise. It might be mean to say this, but if you consider yourself a fan of heavy, intelligent, and dazzlingly technical music and you don't like this, there is something very wrong with you.I can write a gushy review once in awhile. Although I guess they are all gushy.