BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME

I think this happens to be a fairly diverse and fairly creative album. It's quite clear the band had a very obvious metalcore aesthetic, but musically this isn't just plain jane metalcore. While some metalcore bands are more towards the more hardcore punk driven side of metalcore, Between the Buried and Me show more of a melodic metalcore sound that seems to draw influence and has somewhat of a style you can hear in many of the Swedish Gothenburg bands, like At the Gates, In Flames and Dark Tranquility. But as I said above, this isn't a pure metalcore album, so there is some groove metal sounds, grindcore, death metal, technical death metal, some quieter moments that are perhaps somewhat indie inspired. So in addition to the melodic guitar lines of Swedish melodic death metal, there are some more chromatic and dissonant sounding death metal riffs too, as well, as well as the odd pentatonicism to add a southern metal vibe (think, Pantera groove metal style) to the proceedings. Compositionally, I think this album is pretty solid and definitely very clearly progressive metal, if perhaps not quite as progressive say "Images and Words" or Opeth's "Still Life". What I didn't like so much is that it sounds somewhat confused at times, like the band wasn't completely sure what they were aiming for. Some bands can pull of the switching vocal styles well without sounding too odd or albums by bands did that well, but here, as I said, it just comes across as confused at times. They'll be a metalcore vocal style happening courtesy of Tommy Rogers (admittedly not the best metalcore vocal tone either) then straight into a death growled vocal style (again, not the best vocal tone/not the best growls out there) but it seemed to lack clear focus and direction.

However, that aside, there are plenty of very cool riffs to be heard, great drumming and bass playing and a high level of technical skill on display too but fortunately doesn't come across as overly technical. For example, in Shevanel Cut a Flip, there is a riff that really screams Pantera influence, but yet despite that it just grabs you and just sounds very very cool.

Again, back to the composition which I didn't cover a lot of ground on earlier, this album is very solid in this regard. At times it's not totally focused but it's generally quite good and fairly coherent sounding. It's clear these guys have been listening to some progressive metal in addition to the straight death, groove, thrash and grindcore stuff, because some of it really does flow quite nicely and keeps you interested enough to want to listen from start to finish.

I'd say Shevanel Cut a Flip manages to be both the highlight and the downpoint of the album. First 2/3rds of the track are great. I love how it's quite heavy and quite progressive and goes into this lovely clean guitar part with clean vocals and nice chord voicings and melodies played on guitar (Paul Waggoner on lead guitar, not only here but throughout the whole album, Nick Fletcher on rhythm), After about 7 minutes it does seem to lose it a bit. Seemed kind of like an attempt at a minimalistic ending, but honestly I just think it wasn't necessary to really extend the track much over 7 minutes, because unlike really good minimalistic stuff that has elements added over time to add interest, it's just really the same thing played over and over again with the melody guitar section eventually dropping out, which doesn't add much more interest anyway I think.

Production wise, sonically anyway, it's nothing to write home about, but it's nothing bad either.

So all in all, Between the Buried and Me is a very solid and more than competent album with great music, although neither is this insanely amazing either and has some occasional weak spots and some slightly dull moments from time to time.

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