COLORS

BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME throw everything they have into their music. No restraint, no rules, just fiery young imaginations and the courage to try this with that, and to add a sprinkling of the other. The result is an adjectiviser's dream: just about any word will describe some part of this startling and energetic album.

First, the musicians clearly have superior ability with their instruments, and the vocalist handles singing, shouting and growling with equal ease. Second, and more importantly in my opinion, they write music worth listening to, their compositions characterised by sudden radical shifts in meter, tempo, volume and even style: one minute they're churning out grindcore, the next they accompany a bar room brawl with wild west music. Plenty of bands attempt this, but few have the ability to encompass all this within compositions that retain their shape and overall personality. This album is sixty-four minutes with barely a misstep.

Much of it is, however, a little too fast for this old man, who struggles these days to stand upright in this sort of hurricane. My feelings tend toward admiration more than love, but I can certainly appreciate the passion and skill the band brings to bear on this material. I can forgive a great deal if a band earnestly attacks their task, and while tracks like 'The Decade of Statues' don't do a great deal for me, the very next track ('Informal Gluttony') is absolutely staggering with its monster percussion, Eastern opening and searing middle section. The band demonstrates inventiveness and courage in spades. The heart of the album is two long tracks that run together into an almost impenetrable wall of noise, culminating in the wild riffage of 'Ants of the Sky'.

In terms of feel, the pure energy and freedom here is the nearest thing in progressive metal to what THE MARS VOLTA conjure up in psych/post-punk prog. There's no doubt that this album and this band will appeal to fans of the genre, and to most metal fans of any description.

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