COLORS

I was first introduced to this album 5 years ago. Being someone who typically listens to hard rock and metal, it still took a couple of tries to get a feel for it. I'd never listened to much death metal or metalcore before. In short, this album expanded my world of music into many new metal subgenres, as well as the world of prog. After well over 100 listens through the years, this album is nothing short of amazing.

The album begins with peaceful and delicate melodies played an piano, but quickly begins its ascent (or descent?) to metal. Unfortunately the second track (as I find with all of their albums for some odd reason) is the weakest of them all. It stands out in a bad way, because it's hardly progressive and contains almost entirely growly vocals which are used more sparingly in other tracks. Really, this song should almost have been left out altogether. That's almost the only negative point I have about this album.

Informal gluttony has an immensely powerful instrumental intro, and eventually settles down into to a hauntingly elegant chorus ("feed me fear..."). This album changes genre/mood often, and on a first listen seems as if they're doing it at random. Except after a couple listens, the album doesn't feel "random". It has a flow almost unlike anything I've ever heard. Some prog albums it feels as if they wrote a bunch of pieces then later strung the medley together with some attached interludes, but this just... grows. It evolves as it goes. The last several minutes of 'Sun of Nothing' leading into 'Ants of the Sky', possibly my favourite part of the whole album, is a great example of this. It starts off with gentle clean guitar and some very light drums, growing into a catchy rock rhythm, further growing into a heavy rock rhythm and growly vocals, and finally evolving into an incredible metal climax that builds into the first riff of Ants of the Sky. They take something that should normally feel strained or forced, and make it feel so 'proper', like it was meant to be. Ants of the Sky continues this feeling, minus the increase in intensity. This song has a vast abundance of instrumental sections, and is easily the best overall track on the album. The "main" riff or refrain that happens in this song only twice is almost reminiscent of "Canon rock" by Funtwo on youtube. Yes, it sounds almost classical amidst a track otherwise seemingly not classical in any other way. But it sounds right at home, which I just can't explain. That's part of the magic of this album.

Ants of the sky also has a beautiful part just past the halfway point where Tommy overlaps his clean vocals with his growl vocals to create something quite beautiful, yet at the same time powerful. It's almost like the listener can choose their preferred vocals and ignore the other. He does it again in the song "Swim to the Moon" on one of their other albums. I've still never heard another band do something quite like that.

Viridian, a relaxing yet intricate bass solo, is a nice change from the intensity of the other tracks on the album. Viridian is very essential actually, particularly it's placement just before the final track. It allows you to prepare for the mind-altering instrumentals at the end of the album. I see it as the quiet before the storm and as such, does not at all feel out of place on this album.

White Walls starts out powerful and is the perfect finisher to this album. In my opinion the section from 1-3 minutes in outstays its welcome. It just doesn't seem to 'add' anything to the song except for some quirky riffs and growls, kind of like the first half of Foam Born: B. But after drum fills take the music back down to some soft guitar and vocals, the song is right where it needs to be. You hear the song starting to build very slowly ("Step back.."). The building is what this album is all about, and is just so deliciously good at it. The middle section all the way till the end of White Walls is my other favourite part of this album. The song reaches an absolutely insane climax followed further by guitar and drum solo's that completely fulfill the standard set earlier in the album. I can never get enough of those beautifully insane instrumentals, and that's what makes this album a 5 from me, though I'd really give it a 4.7 or so. Foam Born: B and a chunk of White Walls hinders this album from being my definition of perfect prog metal(core).

At first you probably won't notice it. BTBAM don't just 'play' metal on this album. They USE metal as a tool to take their music to the next level.