Never mind the legions of Dream Theater clones out there: Between The Buried And Me are the real progressive metal deal. Unable to contain their excitement about hurling innumerable disparate influences into their swirling cauldron of noise, the North Carolina quintet have excelled themselves on their fifth full-lengther, expanding on the multi-genre madness of last year’s The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP and cooking up a bewildering gumbo of demented ideas and inspirational zeal.
From elegantly melodic intros and interludes like Goodbye To Everything and The Black Box through to towering epics Astral Body, Telos and the breathtaking Silent Flight Parliament, this is where death metal, prog rock, jazz, cartoon music, art pop and left-field hardcore collide.
Countless sharp hooks hidden within the sustained chaos and a seemingly endless stream of jarring curveballs that mirror the most twisted excesses of Mr. Bungle and John Zorn’s Naked City, while sounding nothing much like either.
The end result is a fascinating, challenging journey through the sonic cosmos, and one of the few major releases this year that genuinely are prog to the core.
