Dan DaranciangBetween The Buried And Me
Album: Alaska
For Fans of: Opeth, Meshuggah, Mastodon, Into The Moat
Final Grade: 5 stars
Bottom line: For anyone into metal (or just quality musicianship), “Alaska” is an excellent place to go
Songs To Check Out: “Selkies,” “Roboturner,” “Backwards Marathon”
It makes me laugh to think that Between The Buried And Me, a brutally heavy-metal band, named themselves after a lyric from a Counting Crows song. “Alaska,” BTBAM’s third album, is technical metal at its best. (Counting Crows bears very little resemblance.) Their songs are jaw-dropping mixes of complex riffs and intricate, symphonic breakdowns. As with their previous work, “Alaska” is so schizophrenic and complex that at times it would be easy to cast the album aside as incomprehensible. Yet the band balances their chaos with the right amount of consistency and peace to keep us intrigued and coming back for more. For the purist metal headbangers, however, fear not: the raw viciousness of this album will no doubt satisfy.
The album begins strongly with the blistering track “All Bodies,” featuring intense tempo changes, mesmerizing guitar work and a touch of European-style thrash metal. A defining feature of the band is their ability to transition rapidly from one tempo to another and still stay tight, adding to the experimental feel of their music. The album surges through to the end with heavy handed cuts like “Roboturner,” “The Primer” and “Autodidact” until the anticlimax of “Laser Speed.” Despite the discrepancy at the end, you’re thoroughly exhausted and satisfied.
To add to the pleasant confusion in “Alaska,” the last song on the album, “Laser Speed,” is a jazzy instrumental salsa track. When the salsa beat starts up, it’s so surprising it’s funny. But while it does seem totally out of place, “Laser Speed” reflects the peace/chaos dichotomy of the entire album, while demonstrating the band’s breadth of skill. Another song that comprises the calm of “Alaska” is “Medicine Wheel,” a slow instrumental track introduced by a rainstorm. The dichotomy is heard even within songs themselves, like on “Selkies: The Endless Obsession,” which starts hard but pauses midstride for a jazzy acoustic guitar and piano combo. “Backwards Marathon” follows a very similar format in which the blistering metal cuts off for a four-minute lulling interlude. This is classic BTBAM at work. For fans of Between The Buried And Me, this album is very exciting: it shows just how strong the band has become.