Mark’s Review:

If you read my bio, you’ll find that I’m that metal guy that’s into prog. If it’s technical, complex and musically advanced, I’m a fan, and although I’m quite immersed with the new Transatlantic, if you add a heavy component to it, then I’m all in. So it’s a mystery to me why I’ve never been able to get into Between the Buried and Me. These guys are as technical as hell, and can pretty much dominate any style of music, but I’ve never really enjoyed any of their albums. Their last album, Colors, featured some good songs, but it took me many, many listens to wrap my head around it. This usually means two things: 1) This is the sign of something great and complex, or 2) This just isn’t very good to begin with. The Great Misdirect gives me that similar feeling, lots of great moments that are wasted in a song-writing style that seems to feature a public display of talent over anything else.

Recently, a reader on MetalSucks.net stated that BTBAM is “the Lebron James of music“. I can see the correlation; James is an amazingly flexible athlete that can fine-tune his game between power and finesse to overpower anyone on the court. And just as he can seemingly perform anything humanly possible in order to win basketball games, BTBAM has the same level of talent in the musical realm, jumping through different genres and tempos with ease. The difference is that while James doesn’t feel like he has to use ALL the moves in his arsenal every time he touches the ball, every BTBAM song plows through riffs and song passages like a 2-year old does toilet paper. Almost every song on The Great Misdirect is jam-packed with a schizophrenic number of time changes, riffs, breakdowns and almost nothing resembling a song structure. While many will feel that this isn’t needed in the prog world, the songs get a bit tiresome and boring when you feel like they are just constantly changing themes for almost ten minutes with no payoff in sight. Tracks such as Obfuscation start off strong, but quickly degenerate into a chaotic and confusing pool of notes. It’s a shame, because that song, as well as Swim to the Moon and Fossil Genera feature some truly inspired and signature moments (although Fossil’s calliope-intro conjures a few chuckles and thoughts of bad Umphrey’s McGee). It doesn’t help when I’ve never been a fan of Tommy Rogers’ vocals, which I feel are forced when growling, and not technically sound when singing. Regardless, after sitting through four epic songs and two tracks that basically serve as intros, the album leaves me with feelings of both utter admiration and extreme confusion.

Maybe I’m the wrong type of prog fan to truly enjoy The Great Misdirect. As we’ve seen with the rise in popularity of other Victory bands as well as iwrestledabearonce and The Human Abstract, the current trend in technical music is to mash as many riffs and parts into a song as possible. You can say that this is a rebellion against standard song-writing structure, pushing the boundaries of what is “progressive”, or a commentary on the media over-saturation of American youth. No one denies that BTBAM are a group of very talented individuals, but after listening to almost an hour of attention-deficit inducing songs, I have a hard time really getting into their music.

Mark’s Rating:

King says: “Between the Buried and Meh”

Ed’s Review:

When a band advances so far into the expansive and sometimes flamboyant world of progressive metal, they’d better be damn good at it or else face a sea of snobbery from the mighty subculture of geeks that live & breathe this type of music (as Mark can confirm, just stand in line and eavesdrop a bit on your way in to a Dream Theater concert and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about). What’s interesting about Between The Buried and Me is that they didn’t always play material so diverse or detailed as on their new opus “The Great Misdirect” – their roots are actually based in precision-oriented thrash and grindcore music, which makes it an odd pleasure to see a band move so far outside of the hardcore box without getting completely hung out to dry by their old-school fanbase (that is, if you consider 2002 “old-school”).

“The Great Misdirect” is BTBAM’s latest effort to explain the cosmos in just under an hour, and they have pulled out every damn trick in the book and then some. The band has always favored marathon session song structures elevated to dizzying technical heights, often intentionally confusing the listener with several peaks and valleys, sometimes going as far as to expand a single riff to so many variations it could easily send the Dillinger Escape Plan running for the nearest box of tissues. So it should be no surprise the band has taken this formula one step further on “The Great Misdirect” for better or for worse. BTBAM have never necessarily been the sum of their parts – simply put… with this band, it’s actually the parts that either strike or don’t.

I absolutely adore the opening track “Mirrors” with it’s free gliding clean guitars, part jazz and part space rock, and I’m even hearing some mid-90’s indie/emo touches here – a hell of a way to draw in listeners during the first five minutes of an opus. Obviously things change immediately, taking a quick turn for the extreme and pretty much staying there for the rest of the album. “Obfuscation” features the band’s usual pummeling grind metal mixed with a chanting chorus that contains none other than a bit of Dragonforce-esque riffage (yikes) and a fantastic drum/bass/lead breakdown just after the five minute mark that sounds like a hyperactive King Crimson mixed with The Mars Volta back when they were on a lot of drugs. Thankfully the band avoids using the polka gimmick as much as on their previous album “Colors“, instead favoring more airy, layered, psychedelic passages during their mellower moments that have more in common with Porcupine Tree and Katatonia than Mr. Bungle. A great example of this is “Disease, Injury, Madness” where vocalist Tommy Rogers layers several clean vocal tracks to achieve a psychedelic wonderment that would make prog gurus like Adrian Belew and Steven Wilson quite proud. “Desert of Song” returns briefly to the swingy, carnival-style polka the band likes to experiment with (a bit useless in my opinion… Mike Patton did it a lot better 10-15 years ago) which leads the band directly into smashing out the final 18-minute epic “Swim to the Moon“.
Although I love the Don Caballero-style intro and the next few space metal sections, the track quickly falls into a plethora of jam sessions pieced together (smells like Dream Theater) and even going as far as to include a brief drum solo (???). So yeah, the band lost me there. With that being said, the guitarists do a phenomenal job throughout the album, and although I think vocalist Tommy Rogers has a slightly generic “death growl” voice, I think there is a lot to be admired about his clean vocals and I actually look forward to hearing more of them in the future.

The songs on “The Great Misdirect” are well-executed for sure, but could they be considered cohesive and genuinely well written? It’s debatable to say the least. I’d prefer to say there are several “sections” of these songs that are impressive, if not downright mind-blowing. But to call this an “album”, or anything other than a long string of brainy sections glued together, is probably an overstatement. But I think few could argue that this is a very enjoyable listen nonetheless.

Ed’s Rating:

King says: “Between the Buried and MORE COWBELL!!!”

Have A Listen:

Between the Buried and Me – Obfuscation:

Download audio file (Obfuscation.mp3)

Man… it’s been awhile, but Burnt by the Sun are back (for a limited time only), and showing the metal/hardcore community how the fuck it’s done. If you haven’t followed the fluctuating career of these Jerseyites, Heart of Darkness is as great a place to start as it is absolute proof of their legacy to the genre we all hold dear.

In terms of sheer heaviness, Heart of Darkness easily trumps the band’s previous efforts, yet somehow doesn’t feel quite as aggressive… which I certainly don’t consider to be a bad thing. The songwriting on HoD is remarkably cohesive, and BBTS are able to deliver a rock-solid album as opposed to a collection of good songs (a feat that’s becoming all too rare these days, and one that will always win brownie-points with yours truly).

The album kicks off with Inner Station, a song that could easily be considered the exemplary BBTS track. It’s heavy, fast, aggressive, screamy, rifftastic, memorable, tough, rifftastic, spoken, screamy, heavy, galloping, heavy as fuck, and under 3 minutes long. Sound pretty awesome? It is. And there’s plenty more where that came from. The album also features a (thankfully) rerecorded version of Goliath, which was featured on the split 7″ with Car Bomb from a couple years back. Closer The Wolves are Running is another high point, with riffs on par with Spinner Dunn (God that song rules… I think I’m going to go back and listen to The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good as soon as I’m finished here). It’s also worth pointing out that fans of the band will truly appreciate the production values herein. There’s something about BBTS’s gruff ethos that simply would not work, were they being produced by Adam D or Zeuss. Instead, producer Eric Rachel delivers a fantastically coarse sound… the perfect compliment to the songs themselves.

An interesting side note (for those who are unaware)… drummer Dave Witte pulls double duty in BBTS and Municipal Waste (who also have a new… though somewhat disappointing… album out). Dave’s bands are a far-cry from one another, but the dude gets an “A for effort” when it comes to being rad (he’s like the metal Jose Freese).

Anyways… if you haven’t figured it out by now, Heart of Darkness is a must-own. And for you cheap bastards out there, a must-stream.

Justin’s Rating:

King says: “I’ve never gotten Burnt by the Sun… namely because I use SPF 666! Wait… what? Ohhhh… you meant the band… yeah, those guys rule.”

Chris’ Review:

The overall feel of Heart of Darkness strikes a nice balance between modern metal and vintage industrial shred. With songs patched together in an almost grindcore fashion, a few sections are guilty of being unnatural (“Rust (Future Primitive))” or at worst, uninteresting (“F-unit”). More to my taste, some songs stay focused and highly effective (“There Will be Blood,” “The Wolves Are Running”). Deadly precise drums, blast beats and all, guitars and bass alternately huge and surgical, and vocals deceptively complex and varied, keep the theme of ‘well balanced’ going throughout the album.

If Burnt By the Sun wanted their final album to solidify the band’s status as a unique metal voice executed with precision, Heart of Darkness delivers.

Chris’ Rating:

King says: “Come on guys, “Last album?”   I tried that several times and it didn’t help sales at all, so cut the crap.”

Have A Listen:

Burnt by the Sun – Inner Station:

Download audio file (Inner_Station.mp3)

Mark’s Review:

The crowd was interesting to say the least. It was an eclectic blend of “MySpace Metal” and guys that might have left their metal past go, and were searching frantically through their wardrobes for a t-shirt that said, “Hey man..I’m still pretty non-conformist!” Many of this latter group donned “Marshall” or “Zildjian” shirts, or they tried to out-metal each other by picking the “most obscure band” t-shirt they had (hence, it’s the most Dying Fetus and Nasum shirts I’ve seen at a concert). I also saw a guy with a leather Testament jacket SIGNED by Chuck Billy and Alex Skolnick (FTW!). But despite some differences, everyone in the crowd was there to see the grindcore masters Carcass return to the stage. It has been over 10 years since they last toured, and I’ve been waiting to see them since 1994. When I heard last summer that they were reuniting for some European shows, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, they might tour the states. When they announced the “Chicago-area” date, there was no way I was going to miss it. Hell, even if I lived in Gurnee I would’ve driven down! (PWNED!) Editor’s note: Touché.

Like any suburban venue, the Pearl Room in Mokena struggles to stand out against the larger, more credible Chicago concert halls. The promoters figured that in order to get fans to come out on a Sunday afternoon, they had to construct a bill that not only featured 5 opening acts, but a “second stage” that featured a wave of atrocious local acts playing rehashed and sloppy thrash metal. That being said, the Pearl Room is a great venue for metal. It has great sound, no seats, plenty of room and hot waitresses… so basically it’s the anti-House of Blues. Plus it’s near my hometown, and if it existed when I was in high school and living with my parents (or until I was 25 and STILL living with my parents), it would have been my Mecca and Valhalla all rolled into one.

After painfully tolerating the unending wave of opening acts, Carcass finally took the stage. Fill-in drummer Daniel Erlandsson started into Inpropagation, and suddenly I wasn’t 31 years old anymore. Despite my leased SUV and iPhone, I was transformed back to that nerdy, high school metalhead that was obsessed with Heartwork and Necroticism. Jeff Walker, Bill Steer and Michael Amott delivered in every way. The solos, the voice, and riff upon riff were all there as they blasted through classics such as Carnal Forge, Pyosified, Corporal Jigsore Quandary and Embodiment. Walker was hilarious in between songs with his dry British stage-banter, and because Steer was unable to sing most of his parts, he carried the load vocally. He sounded awesome, and the extra touches of reverb and delay produced some truly unbelievable screams. To every wankers delight, the guitarists added their own flair by exaggerating the squeals and bends to many of the Heartwork tunes… it was unnecessary, but so damn cool.

Everything about the show was a dream come true, the setlist, the venue and their performance. It was truly a return to power, and for me and many others a return to my youth. So I think this review will be an easy one:

Mark’s Rating:

King says: “Seeing Carcass play or seeing carcasses play?… either way you’re golden!”

Matt’s Review:

I must admit that I was initially a little bit shocked to see a packed house at 5:30pm on a Sunday evening behind the same Denny’s restaurant that I used to chain-smoke cigarettes and drink coffee in 15 years ago – back when I was just an awkward, acne-ridden, hormonally-challenged, moppy-haired, metalhead teenaged kid who pondered little about the future… other than trying to find someone over 21 who would be willing to buy my friends and I beer and (more) cigarettes before the weekend rolled around. Ah, the memories… it’s hard to believe that Carcass originally called it quits around that same time and – long after I lost the acne, the mop, and became a responsible adult (well, somewhat anyways) who still listens to a lot of metal – are just now getting back together for a full-fledged tour with 3/4 of the classic “Necroticism” thru “Heartwork” lineup intact.

We got there early enough to check out the opening bands Psycroptic, Samael, and Black Dahlia Murder – as well as a couple of other ’second stage’ acts in the other room of the venue not even worth mentioning, let alone writing a full sentence about. Although I never really got into Samael, they did sound solid overall. I was pretty blown away by the precisely virtuosic musicianship of both Psycroptic and Black Dahlia, although I could really do without both of their frontmen, which I will explain later…

For an increasingly jaded prick like myself, the anticipation to see a reunited Carcass was much stronger than I’ve felt for any other band in quite a while. Knowing the talent of all the musicians in the band, it was a given that I was going to see a group of finely-polished crafty veterans playing (at worst) respectable versions of their back catalog while I watched in comfortable content. Instead, I was enthusiastically blasted with an energy-filled non-stop onslaught from the first notes of the opening song “Inpropagation,” all the way up until the last notes of the closing epic masterpiece “Heartwork,” each and every song in between – such as Carnal Forge, Corporal Jigsore Quandery, This Mortal Coil, Embodiment, Incarnate Solvent Abuse, and Death Certificate, to name a few – flawlessly played with minimal stops in between. Frontman/bassist Jeff Walker’s voice has not lost an ounce of it’s punch and intensity after all these years. His humorously witty banter during the rare breaks was also a very refreshing change of pace from the meat-headed and cartoonishly predictable “I wanna see some action in that fuckin’ pit” yelping from the B.D.M. and Psycroptic frontmen before, during, and after every single friggin’ song. Fill-in drummer Daniel Erlandsson (Arch Enemy) proved to be more than capable of handling the job and is definitely one of the more solid metal drummers in the business, by far. The real treat for me though – being a guitar player and all – was seeing the flawless guitar virtuoso duo of Bill Steer (who was apparently sicker than a dog that night) and Michael Amott (who is apparently a redhead these days) in the flesh. Symposium of sickness and blood-red hair aside, it was truly an honor to be in their presence and be reminded of why I got a boner the first time I heard “Heartwork” as a teenager (I did say that I was hormonally-challenged, didn’t I?).

All in all, I couldn’t have possibly asked for anything better that night, except for maybe punching ‘that guy’ 10 feet behind us who kept insisting that every album besides “Reek Of Putrefaction” ’sucks balls.’ Ah well, I guess it could have been worse – Crowbar or Mortiis could’ve been the opening acts!

Matt’s Rating:

King says: “Vegans playing metal? What’s next, an evil clown singing about torturing little girls? B-B-Brilliant!”