Between The Buried And Me- Alaska

Fri 26th Aug, 2005 in Music Reviews

Are they hardcore, are they death or power metal, are they grindcore? Perhaps the more fitting question would be, does any of that matter?

Between The Buried And Me so confidently blur the line between said genres with such gleeful fist in the air attitude, and with more than a penchant for fierce, well composed riff-mania, that any style or sound discussions are rendered well and truly, um, buried.

The first thing that’s clear when spinning Alaska, the third full length album from North Carolina’s Between The Buried And Me, is these guys are brutal. First track All Bodies chugs along sledgehammer style with lashings of melodic guitar, speedy blast-beat drumming, tempo changes and detuned madness basically. All complete with guttural growling or cookie monster vocals in case you were wondering. Musically, the band are no slouches. This side of Swedish metal gods, Meshuggah, this might be the most technically impressive playing I’ve come across. That is, technical without sacrificing decent tunes with a hell of a lot of catchy riffs.

Alaska is the second album the band have released for hardcore American label Victory Records. Their first self-titled album was issued on Lifeforce Records before they moved to a bigger outfit.

To delve further into their sound, the band trade in technical metal which seems to draw as equally from death metal and grindcore as it does hardcore, jazz, hard rock and whatever else. I hear “metalcore” is the term for this stuff and additionally, you can tell the band are well versed in the joys of space rock and progressive music from the last two or three decades. Think Rush, King Crimson and so on.

I don’t confess to be a dedicated metal-only music fan. Far from it, but when that urge takes me and an itch needs to be scratched, nothing does the job like some punishing death metal. If you’re like me, the music actually serves to calm me down almost as much as it acts as a rev up. I don’t know, there must be some kind of wondrous brain chemical explanation there.

Roboturner is probably the most brutal track here with its blasting introduction that barely lets up over seven minutes. My favourite part is the fast and menacing black metal like mayhem and screeching that lasts several minutes punctuated either side by imposing slow doomy riffs. Yum! The band certainly have many gears which they happily shift in and out of. Backwards Marathon deftly features an ambient jazz middle section which lasts several minutes and includes lovely melodies and vocals courtesy of singer Tommy Rogers, co-founder of the band with guitarist Paul Waggoner.

The thinking person’s hardcore outfit, Between The Buried And Me were dubbed several years back, and this is a fair description. Certainly this is for fans of intelligent, complex metal. Perhaps my only criticism would be that the band doesn’t always escape their influences. Sure, they fling us wildly from one genre to the next with expert musicianship. Here’s a grindcore section to rival Carcass at their finest, there’s a beautiful Mars Volta like segue with angular guitar and great high pitched vocals. But I’d rather not be able to so easily spot the reference. A minor fault really when so much is on offer, but the band will truly reach god-like status if they continue to develop their own sound, rather than sitting pretty as a genre bending exercise. My final verdict – go crazy with this album and have fun in the process. A great listen.