COLORS

When I picked up this album, I honestly didn't know what to expect. Alaska was an intense and wonderful suprise, but I didn't know how they could improve over the formula so prevelant on Alaska and Silent Circus. But, needless to say, when I finally sat down to digest this monster of an album, I was wonderfully suprised. I though Alaska was incredible, but this outdid it on many levels. Now, longer compositions do not a prog band make, but the fact that there were 3 10 Minute + songs on this album had me excited from the beginning. Not to mention a more prominent inclusion of different styles and genres into the mix, making for something as oddly described as "Brutal and beautiful and Melodically Intense."

From the soft and beautiful piano opener of Foamborn: The Back Track, Between the Buried and Me take you on a musical thrill ride, full of build ups, climaxes, twists and turns. Gone are the entirely hard hitting songs, and are replaced with more diverse, and interesting tracks. More prevelant are the Keys, the accoustic and jazzy passages, the clean vocals and electronic passages. Even a smidgen of humorous and suprisingly fitting Bluegrass is added to the pallette of sounds. The longer songs allow for more experimentation to be used in the song structure, and make for more epic sounding compositions. The musica maturity on this album is amazing, even managing to sound like Dream Theater and Opeth in certain spots. Even moreso than on Alaska, the clean vocals play a prominent role in the music, a drastic change from their first release, and give it a more accessible feeling than their previous releases.

The feel of this album jumps around a large amount, and even manages to sound happy and angry at the same time. The growling vocals over the Jazzy Metal guitars makes for an interesting feel and sound, and the longer instrumental passages between make for a something that feels more like "Traditional Prog Metal". However, this is not your typical prog metal band. The contrast between aggressiveness and tenderness are as blatant as ever, yet are part of BtBaM's distinct feel and style, and though blatant, the transitions are smoother and interlace the contrasting styles much more effectively than before. They are drifting farther and farther away from their traditional Metalcore roots, and are opening up to much more diverse influences, and creating a unique sound that manages to be both Brutal and Melodic, something BtBaM do very well interestingly.

An incredible release, by both Metal and Progressive standards. Hard hitting and yet beautiful, this album offers so much more than metal, and is an excellent CD for the adventurous metal listener, a sonic scape of frighteningly unique proportions. Obviously not for the casual metal listener, or probably not for a fan of softer prog, but nonetheless a masterpiece of the genre.

5 Stars

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