Between The Buried And Me
Even prog metal heroes Between the Buried and Me aren’t sure where they’re headed on The Great Misdirect
You know your band is officially big when two of your most important musical influences will be opening for you on your gigantic headlining tour. “I feel bad, honestly,” laughs Between the Buried and Me vocalist/keyboardist Tommy Rogers, still gobsmacked at the fact that both Cynic and Devin Townsend will be the support acts on his band’s mid-winter run across North America. “I definitely consider Devin Townsend an idol of mine, and Cynic I’ve been listening to since high school, so it’s just unbelievable. When we were getting this tour together, those are bands we’ve always wanted to play with, but god, having them together on the same tour is a dream come true. We’re so fuckin’ stoked.”
It’s been a remarkable run for the North Carolina quintet over the last six years, one that has seen them display astonishing musical growth with each new album, completely transcending metalcore and technical death metal to the point now where their fifth full-length, The Great Misdirect, can best be described as modern progressive rock. And as that sound continues its perpetual expansion, so does Between the Buried and Me’s fanbase, which grows more and more diverse with each record, as people from outside the metal scene start to catch on. “Every year [our audience] changes and changes,” Rogers marvels. “That’s a big goal for us—we don’t want to stick ourselves into one musical genre or one type of fan. We want anyone and everybody to listen to us, to come see our show. It’s just very flattering to see so many different types of people, from young to old, from metalheads to people who have said, ‘You’re the first heavy band I’ve ever heard.’ That’s such a compliment, because hopefully they’ll dive into this style of music and find other bands they can enjoy as well.”
And the reason so many people are drawn to Between the Buried and Me isn’t so much the band’s dazzling technical prowess as their uncanny ability to fuse so many diverse influences into songs that, while labyrinthine in structure, are always disciplined enough to avoid slipping into self-indulgent noodling. In fact, it’s gotten to the point now where the eclectic arrangements on The Great Misdirect feel absolutely effortless, from the King Crimson-esque breaks in “Obfuscation” to the surprising acoustic turn of “Desert of Song” and the sly Mike Patton homage in “Fossil Genera—A Feed From Cloud Mountain.” “I have been a huge, huge Mr. Bungle fan for many, many years. I grew up listening to Patton’s stuff,” says Rogers when asked about the latter track. “It’s always been a big influence of mine, I can’t deny it. That, between Mr. Bungle and Danny Elfman—just stuff like that. We’ve always kind of hinted towards sounds like that, and I just wanted to have a big section that had the circus-y feel around it. I really enjoy that part. And with the end of the song, I think it was the first time we really focused on drawing back the guitars and putting orchestration synths in the forefront. It was something different, and I really think the dynamics of that song really shine.
“We’re all huge music fans; we love all types of music. I think that’s why our music is the way it is, because we have five people that write differently and listen to different styles of music. The thing about this band is we’ve never put a limit on what you can try, and there’s a lot of relief as a musician with that—you know personally that you shouldn’t be afraid to show something to the guys. I think a lot of bands are stuck in this genre and [they’re] like, ‘Aw, it would be cool to do this, but if we do it, we’ll alienate our fans or our sound.’ With us, we know we have endless possibilities and endless options. Regardless, we’re always going to be a heavy band, but the experimentation is just so much fun as musicians.”
In contrast to the wildly unfocused, arbitrary, kitchen-sink approaches of so many newer also-rans that cite Between the Buried and Me as a major influence, the compositions by Rogers and his bandmates feel so much more organic, clearly the product of a very well-honed songwriting process between five different but equally talented collaborators, something Rogers is extremely proud of. “When we start a song, we never really know how it’s going to turn out,” he admits. “We get a lot of ideas together and we kind of go from there, just really work together to build the song into what we want. That’s another thing that’s really fun—you’ll break into this section in a song and go, ‘Oh god, the possibilities are endless here!’ There are so many options and so many different things you can try to see what works…Yeah, we do go off on crazy journeys or whatever in our songs, but in the end we want a listenable song. We all just keep that in mind; we want to do what’s best for the song and not force something in just because it’s wacky or crazy. We just have a very good sense of what each of our roles are, and what kind of music we each individually write. It’s just a big group effort, and that’s what’s so fun about writing with us.”
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