Between The Buried And Me - Alaska review
| Band: | Between The Buried And Me |
| Album: | Alaska |
| Style: | Progressive metalcore |
| Release date: | September 06, 2005 |
| Guest review by: | flightoficarus |
01. All Bodies
02. Alaska
03. Croakies And Boatshoes
04. Selkies: The Endless Obsession
05. Breathe In, Breathe Out
06. Roboturner
07. Backwards Marathon
08. Medicine Wheel
09. The Primer
10. Autodidact
11. Laser Speed
After a somewhat lukewarm reaction to The Silent Circus, Between The Buried And Me stepped into the studio with a vengeance, not to mention Victory's increased marketing on programs like Headbanger's Ball. Alaska represents a band still experimenting with various alternative and extreme sounds. What more could you expect from a metal group that takes their name from a Counting Crows song? However, this album takes all previous elements and greatly cranks up focus on the bigger picture. Chaos is distinctly more ordered and instrumental tracks like wispy "Medicine Wheel" and jazzy "Laser Speed" flow much more seamlessly with the violence.
Despite being an obvious choice, "Selkies: The Endless Obsession" works well as a short illustration of the album with its unique progressions, aggressive riffs, and stunningly beautiful outro solos. "Backwards Marathon" would also suffice. The first half beats your face repeatedly into the ground with death vocals, while the soothing second half carries your bloodied body to the creek and cleans your wounds. Plenty of groovy bass lines, lovely clean vocal hooks, and effects-laden guitar work. Of course, it wouldn't be BTBAM without the need to put in a few more bruises before the song reaches its conclusion.
I hate using the word "epic" to describe music as it has become so over-saturated and meaningless. Yet, in the case of Alaska, I have few better words to describe some of the crescendos on this album. The way that the synthesizers compliment the masterful guitar scale runs and 3:4 time signature on "The Primer" is breathtaking; and it is not alone. The ups and downs on Alaska often rival albums from the melodeath-inspired folk genre like Ensiferum and Equilibrium for energy, musicianship, and calls for blood.
As much as I still appreciate BTBAM's new material, I feel that more hostile-sounding tracks like "Roboturner" are a thing of the past. With the promise of a distinctly cleaner, prog-rock sounding Coma Ecliptic on the horizon at the time of this writing, it is nice to have great early albums like this to fall back on for a bit more punch. It is a union of progression and aggression that few manage so well.
That having been said, it is great that Between The Buried And Me have managed to create a signature sound while still delivering markedly different albums each time around. Their compositional chops would only grow with my personal favorite, Colors, while expeditions to the further reaches of time and space would find them in strange new territories with The Great Misdirect and The Parallax. What Enslaved is to black metal, BTBAM is to metalcore. Cheers to growth and middle fingers to convention.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 9 |
| Songwriting: | 9 |
| Originality: | 9 |
| Production: | 9 |
Written by flightoficarus | 04.05.2015
Guest review disclaimer:
This is a guest review, which means it does not necessarily represent the point of view of the MS Staff.
This is a guest review, which means it does not necessarily represent the point of view of the MS Staff.
Comments
Comments: 14
Visited by: 55 users
| musclassia Staff Posts: 7621  |
This one from BTBAM, and particularly the two before it (Mordecai aside), are a bit too aggressive and in-your-face for me, I think they got it just about right with the extreme/melodic balance on Colors and have continued to release stuff I hugely enjoy since. That said, the intro and extended instrumental outro of Selkies is just absolutely mesmerizing, and there's a few other songs on here I enjoy enough to have positive feelings towards this album. Nice review.
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| flightoficarus Stamp Tramp Posts: 1116  |
Written by musclassia on 04.05.2015 at 22:09 Thanks. Maybe it's the added college nostalgia surrounding this one, but it just gives me the fuzzies. Either way, amazing players in this band.
---- Daily underground metal recommendations at Metal Trenches. Watch metal content on the Metal Trenches YouTube Channel.
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| LeKiwi High Fist Prog Posts: 4099  |
Written by musclassia on 04.05.2015 at 22:09 Oddly enough, I would have agreed with you word for word about a year ago. Having delved deeply into the aggressive side of metal since then, I've come from rating this a 4 to 8 - nearly a 9! I suggest you come back to this after a while 
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| musclassia Staff Posts: 7621 |
Written by LeKiwi on 05.05.2015 at 16:33 I went back and listened to it again today - it must've been a couple years at least since I last listened to this, because my extremity tolerance must've gone up considerably, which happened a while ago. As far as the music goes, I still think BTBAM do everything great except for the really all-out extreme parts, which can be quite dry and dull, and their ever-decreasing presence with successive albums doesn't derive complaints for me. I think the songwriting that would come into its own on Colors was still a work in progress here; however, there's plenty of moments and segments that work well, from the likes of All Bodies, Alaska, Backwards Marathon, and Selkies, The Primer and Medicine Wheel are all neat songs in general. I wouldn't go higher than a 7 because it's rough around the edges and could be (and was) improved upon, but there's certainly enough here of merit to make the album a good enough entry in their back catalogue.
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| LeKiwi High Fist Prog Posts: 4099 |
Written by musclassia on 07.05.2015 at 02:21 I never thought I'd see the day when someone shared that opinion 
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| musclassia Staff Posts: 7621 |
Written by LeKiwi on 07.05.2015 at 03:04 It actually slightly surprises me that it's not widely held! I really like the more extreme parts of BTBAM which have even just a shade of softness to them (for example, I really dig the groovy "A SPACEMAN, IS THAT WHAT I AM" part from Sun Of Nothing, and something like Astral Body never gets too extreme for my pleasure), but the just intense parts never really do anything to me. I know they're probably there to act as contrast to the more melodic parts, but it's almost like I get rewarded by the rest of it for navigating those parts.
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| LeKiwi High Fist Prog Posts: 4099 |
Written by musclassia on 07.05.2015 at 11:15 You read my mind, especially that last sentence! This is surreal
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| musclassia Staff Posts: 7621 |
Written by LeKiwi on 07.05.2015 at 20:28 *hides telepathy machine* 
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| LeKiwi High Fist Prog Posts: 4099 |
Written by musclassia on 07.05.2015 at 23:20 You bastard...  Btw, have you heard the The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP? That's the one release where I feel they executed the heavier element with absolute perfection.
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| musclassia Staff Posts: 7621 |
Written by LeKiwi on 08.05.2015 at 19:51 Oh of course, I own all the studio releases from Colors onwards (well, at least of new material, never looked into the cover album), I'd probably rank Hypersleep Dialogues 4th out of 4 for that period, but that's only because Colors, Great Misdirect and Future Sequence are all excellent. Specular Reflection in particular is just a frigging storming track, and the other two aren't bad at all. They definitely had a good control of their more extreme side on that EP.
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| Panterica Posts: 341  |
Written by LeKiwi on 07.05.2015 at 20:28 Finally someone who understands!
---- Li'ed - Prog-Metal from Jerusalem https://open.spotify.com/artist/7aZWDrAAvDSLMaSmDSE8zA https://www.facebook.com/LiedBandMusic http://lied-band.bandcamp.com/
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| LeKiwi High Fist Prog Posts: 4099 |
Written by Panterica on 10.05.2015 at 23:25 Omg. I can't deal right now. Another person who has the same opinion about this band?! 
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| Panterica Posts: 341 |
Written by LeKiwi on 10.05.2015 at 23:30 I got so excited I had to see who are these two remarkable people, and after I looked at your profiles I came to the conclusion that I want to adopt you both! Accept my unconditional love!  Unless I'll find out you don't like bunnies. In that case- you're dead to me. 
---- Li'ed - Prog-Metal from Jerusalem https://open.spotify.com/artist/7aZWDrAAvDSLMaSmDSE8zA https://www.facebook.com/LiedBandMusic http://lied-band.bandcamp.com/
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| LeKiwi High Fist Prog Posts: 4099 |
Written by Panterica on 10.05.2015 at 23:55 Written by musclassia on 09.05.2015 at 00:30 Just thought I'd let you both know that the new album is largely bereft of those boring "brutal" parts. Go listen to it now!
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