Following a four-year absence, Between The Buried And Me have returned, this most mercurial of bands having taken a further step into oddball prog territory along the way. For a band who had their origins in metalcore, BTBAM have expanded so far beyond their original remit as to be almost an entirely different band. Even the distance from the epic Coma Ecliptic to The Blue Nowhere seems an almost impassable void, with the band now incorporating elements from Faith No More, Fantomas, and early Genesis into their already expansive sound. The result is an album that will have fans in raptures and everyone else scratching their heads, and it’s hard to imagine BTBAM would have it any other way.
Offering little in the way of a preamble, The Blue Nowehere lands on the listener with both feet, the eccentric excursions of Things We Tell Ourselves In The Dark combining Fantomas vocals with elements of King Crimson, Genesis, Harold Faltermeyer, and Primus. Lengthy, schizophrenic, but with a core melody that is irresistible, it’s a dizzying opening, paving the way for an album that steadfastly refuses to bow to convention.
With the musical Marmite opener having either ensnared or entirely alienated the listener, BTBAM plunge headlong into the stuttering electronica of God Terror by turns Aphex Twin noise and splenetic, heavy metal riffing, it’s a dense journey into the abyss, with a heavily distorted vocal accompanying on your way down. With a dark core worthy of Jordan Rudess himself, God Terror is the result of too many nights spent practising scales while listening to King For A Day… and it absolutely rules neatly bridging technicality and the raw, untrammelled power of heavy metal. It segues into Absent Thereafter, a more settled piece (although everything’s relative), with wonderfully slow-burning melodic passages that hark back to the majesty of Coma Ecliptic, the band even throwing in a stately solo worthy of David Gilmour along the way. Of course, this being BTBAM, the gorgeous harmonies eventually give way to a bizarre, country-fried riff that appears out of nowhere and sends the listener shooting off across the desert like something out of Wacky Races. It’s deranged. It’s wonderful, and it’ll leave you with a stupefied grin plastered right across your features.
Following the short, baffling Pause, which finds the band traipsing through dark ambient into a theatrical world more commonly inhabited by the likes of Haken, we arrive at Door #3, which sounds like Devin Townsend and Job For A Cowboy had an illegitimate child. With scything riffs, a certain bug-eyed theatricality, and occasional bursts of singalong wonder, it wraps up the first half of the album in style.
Opening the second half, the sub-one-minute Mirador Uncoil is a weird, gypsy-folk piece that merely sets the scene for the stunning, epic-length Psychomanteum. As a marker of the band’s ongoing ambition, it’s a stunning work that packs in some of the heaviest moments on the record, as well as a series of passages that explore everything from oddball circus noise reminiscent of Fantomas’ Suspended Animation to Sondheim-esque theatricality. However, what really stands out is not the sonic diversity, but how cohesive the band makes it all sound, their fluid musicianship binding together the most disparate elements into a songs that are almost symphonic in their sweep and scope.
Similarly lengthy, Slow Paranoia takes us on a darker trip, the mid-tempo might of the opening riff washing away the circus whimsy embedded in the track that preceded it. A darkly metallic outpouring, it has its own atypical moments of course, but the overall tone of the track cleaves closer to death metal than anything else on the album, albeit offset by passages that nod to the likes of Dog Fashion Disco with their unconventional time shifts and bug-eyed vocals. There’s even room for a trip to the music hall, as the band trip the light fantastic on the fringes of acceptability, the metallic stabs that threaten to overturn it all as unsettling as a dash of cold water to the face. Honestly, few bands are capable of this level of invention across an entire album, yet BTBAM make it sound easy.
Following two such monumental pieces, it falls to the final pair of tracks to guide the listener back to earth. Up first, the title track finds us suddenly facing swathes of glacial synth and arpeggiated guitars. It results in a dreamy piece that is part prog ballad, part soundtrack to some unseen 80s movie. Calmer, more reflective, and rather lovely, it’s far removed from what precedes it, yet it fits – perhaps because of the band’s thoroughly committed performance. It leaves the sublime Beautifully Human to round out this endlessly varied album on a note that finds the band combining Tool and Anathema to profoundly emotional effect.
Between The Buried And Me are one of those bands who seem to evolve right in front of your very eyes. From the dizzying, gleefully schizophrenic opener, through the dense headlands of Psychomanteum and Slow Paranoia, the band delight in the unexpected. However, this is no mere exercise in technicality, and there’s an emotional power to the pieces that keeps the listener coming back long after the initial shock ‘n’ awe has worn off. While the band may have reached a point where they’re just a little too off the wall for the casual listener, this is no bad thing – BTBAM follow their muse and, for those willing to take the trip, The Blue Nowhere is an incredibly rewarding journey. 9/10
