Between The Buried And Me - The Blue Nowhere - review
Between The Buried And Me - The Blue Nowhere - review
Album
The Blue Nowhere Release date
September 12, 2025 Tracklist
01. Things We Tell Ourselves In The Dark02. God Terror
03. Absent Thereafter
04. Pause
05. Door #3
06. Mirador Uncoil
07. Psychomanteum
08. Slow Paranoia
09. The Blue Nowhere
10. Beautifully Human
A review by
musclassia September 30, 2025
The Blue Nowhere represents the end of the longest gap between releases in the band’s history. It has a relative smorgasbord of guest musicians, but the group’s first release with a changed line-up in 2 decades is also their first with only 4 members, following the departure of Dustie Waring in controversial circumstances. While the band have recruited Sometime In February’s Tristan Auman for live performances, the quartet of remaining members handled writing and recording of this new release, which also departs from the group’s long-running reliance on narrative concepts for a more freeform conceptual approach. It’s all change overall for Between The Buried And Me, and with that comes some teething issues.
Colors II is one of the highlights of the 2020s for me when it comes to metal, but the band’s other releases after The Parallax II: Future Sequence have, for me, fallen a bit below the Colors-thru-Parallax zenith of their career to date. The Blue Nowhere turns Colors II into more of an aberration than the start of a new trajectory, and it initially threatens to be even more concerning. I first heard opening song and lead single “Things We Tell Ourselves In The Dark” live at ArcTanGent, and my concerns about it there were sustained on record, as the weird funk vibe they’ve experimented with here is generally a swing and a miss.
I’m not that much fonder of the first half of following song “God Terror”, even if I prefer its ‘incoming danger’ vibe coming from the synths; however, the record begins to properly find its feet a couple of minutes from the end of this track, as a drum- and bass-driven atmospheric build leads into a properly chonky heavy riff possessing real venom, finally delivering something memorable for the right reasons. While I don’t hate the first 10 or so minutes of The Blue Nowhere, it does take until past that point to start to feel like the album is reaching something like the standard I expect from Between The Buried And Me.
After this comes the first of 3 tracks on the album that exceed the 10-minute mark, and “Absent Thereafter” may be the pick of the bunch. It gets quickly into fast technical riffing and classic BTBAM extremity, gradually growing more melodic, first in a quirky fashion (backed up by brass instrumentation from some of the guest musicians), and then later by shifting towards a more atmospheric feel. After the first introduction of the song’s chorus and a tasteful solo, there’s a sudden shift towards an example of the band’s typical genre wackiness, sliding into a 12-bar blues rhythm with rockabilly swing. While the genre experimentation on the opening track didn’t gel for me, this vibe is closer to something like “Injury, Disease, Madness” from The Great Misdirect, and both its initial introduction and the ways in which it is subsequently reprised and experimented with (figuring out how to integrate both extreme metal and big brass into the equation) pays off nicely.
Next comes the first of two interlude pieces, each of which sandwich the more straightforward and extreme song “Door #3” (mid-song flamenco detour aside); “Pause” is the longer of the interludes, but more understated, with ambience flowing into acoustic guitar and clean singing before a more theatrical conclusion. The latter interlude, “Mirador Uncoil”, is an exhibition for the various orchestral guests credited on The Blue Nowhere, and both this track and later “Slow Paranoia” leave me wondering whether touring with The Dear Hunter several years ago has rubbed off on BTBAM; the orchestrations in each instance have a very similar feel to chunks of Act IV: Rebirth And Reprise.
While they’ve not been orchestrated to this extent before, such sounds aren’t unusual to this band, who’ve had ‘circus music’ labels thrown at their music plenty in the past; while I don’t dislike it here, I do wonder whether the execution isn’t as compelling, or if some of the band’s wackiness is losing its appeal over time. Both “Slow Paranoia” and “Psychomanteum” do struggle for memorability in parts due to the cacophonic overwriting, and aspects of the theatricality feel overly cheesy. That said, I do enjoy both songs overall, each of them broadly fitting the mould for a classic Between The Buried And Me song. There’s plenty of fierce extremity, with some strong riffing, and the tracks at their best can deliver great moments, whether it be moving atmospheric sections, compelling solos, striking instrumental pyrotechnics, or the real memorable and impassioned vocal phrases in the final couple of minutes of “Slow Paranoia”.
While these songs feel very on brand for BTBAM, the final two are rather less so, but I actually rather enjoy each of them. The title track is a far catchier and more poppy, for lack of a better word, song than the band have ever dabbled with before, and while Tommy Rogers’ vocals aren’t perfect for this sound (there’s a few iffy moments on that front across the album, including the first few lines of the record), I find it quite endearing. Both this song and closer “Beautifully Human” are clean-only; the latter is a radical change from most closing songs from the band, but its understated emotionality makes for a satisfying conclusion to the record.
Following the old cliché for many a musician, Paul Waggoner ranked this new release as his favourite by the band. While I would strongly argue to the contrary, I do ultimately find it to be a positive addition to the band’s catalogue, its flaws not detracting from an overall level of enjoyment. Still, much like The Blue Nowhere did to Colors II, I hope that their next effort also frames this release as an aberration rather than the beginning of a trend.
Written on 30.09.2025 by
Written on 30.09.2025 by
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I don't know why people dislike this album so much. It has really good tracks. You are right when you say it's a bit of a hit and miss though (some of the songs are lacking that extra oomph). I actually like the pop-infused tracks and I think it works. Maybe that's why I liked it more than most people. Maybe people didn't give it enough spins to fully comprehend it or expected something else from the band. I feel like they tried something new at least.
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