thePULSEBy Jennifer Russo
There are those moments when you have to wonder where the time has gone. I find this happening a lot when I decide to dust off a CD that’s been on the rack for a while. There is that WOW moment when you realize that you have been listening to (and better yet liking) a band since before the age of crazy-tech 3D mega-movement, super-sensory video games and…Facebook. With the classic rock bands, the reaction isn’t quite so strong, but with bands who got their start at the beginning of the millennium, it is easy to forget ~ and then remember with those first notes of track 1 ~ just how quickly the time has passed.
It’s hard to believe that Between the Buried and Me (BTBAM) has been around for more than a decade already. The first time I listened to them was around 7 years ago when a friend of mine told me to check out Alaska, which was actually their third studio album. They had a sort of death metal sound with some punk vibes and I really dug it. Each album since has displayed more maturity and more edge. Fast forward a couple years to 2011 to their first album with Metal Blade, The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues, an album that in my mind brought BTBAM to the forefront of their many musical peers. At a time when there were a lot of bands that I wished would go back to their older styles, BTBAM did something new…and OUTDID all of their previous work that I had already liked. And it all came down to one thing: the story.
All songs come from somewhere ~ an experience, an emotion, or another reason to express oneself musically. There is something unique, though, about an album that tells a story from beginning to end ~ a style we expect to hear in classical scores, but not necessarily common in Metal-Land. The conceptual writing that BTBAM accomplishes in both that album and its sequel: The Parallax II: Future Sequence (released late 2012) is simply phenomenal: two people from unique yet parallel worlds colliding and learning, sharing and conversing is the stuff of sci-fi movies and yet, here it is in a rock album not to watch, but to absorb aurally. This album gave Between the Buried and Me their biggest billboard debut in the band’s history.
BTBAM lead vocalist (and new dad) Tommy Rogers tells me that “It’s so flattering to see that people care enough to get the new record and that people are still buying records. It made us feel so good about everything. We put a lot of hard work into this record and to see the response makes us realize it’s worth it.”
I asked Tommy to share a little about how the story for the Parallax albums came about. He says that “We all knew we wanted to do some sort of concept for an album that still really represented who we are as a band. Our guitarist Paul actually had this idea of what if there was another version of us somewhere in space, maybe another world just like ours. What if these two versions of a person find each other somehow and share the same soul? The ideal definitely intrigued me and I knew I could elaborate a lot on it. It was a very fun experience and something very different. We approached it trying to be as organic as possible.”
BTBAM, who will be touring with Coheed & Cambria and opener Russian Circles this year, is looking forward to promoting the new album. Tommy explains, “It kind of came about out of the blue, but it definitely seemed like the right thing for us. We are definitely looking forward to this tour and getting in front of new fans. It’s something new and different and we’re really excited to see where it goes.”
Check out BTBAM’s official website at www.betweentheburiedandme.com and if you haven’t picked up the new album, The Parallax II, be sure to grab it. Definitely don’t miss BTBAM when they play in Boston at the House of Blues on March 14th. Get tickets to this show on www.ticketmaster.com, available now.
