By Leo Gomon
Western Sun staff writer
Progressive music is more than just extremely talented musicians playing extremely complex music. It’s the fusion of ideas, genres, arrangements and a constant evolutionary shift that sets the bar on what artists have staying power or not.
Between the Buried and Me is the type of band that you won’t like at first because you either won’t understand it or it won’t make any sense. Their ability to genre-bend and slither in between so many soundscapes is their bread and butter and will have any heavy/progressive music fan swooning.
“The Parallax II: Future Sequence” is the band’s sixth studio release and without a doubt their most ambitious. It follows up to 2011’s “The Parallax: Hypersleep Diologues” EP, as a continuous concept album based on futurism, space, madness, isolation and all things bleak. Clocking in at a little over 72 minutes in length, it is one continuous flow of musical composition, meant to be listened from beginning to end. Opening with the mellow, ethereal “Goodbye to Everything”, Thomas Rogers shows his improved clean singing voice, soon followed by “Astral Body” giving off hints of Dream Theater progressions with brutal rhythms.
Difficult to take in all at once, this album will leave you overwhelmed after the first listen. The riffs are insane, the guitar leads are blistering, while the drums blast the album into orbit and bring it down with beautiful rudiments and polyrhythms. At the same time, the bass is audible, complimentary, and fills the sound perfectly.
Closed by the 15 minute “Silent Flight Parliament” and “Goodbye to Everything Reprise”, one can only wonder what in the world they just experienced, and how it was created. This is a true modern metal classic, a spacey voyage through progressive soundscapes painted by a band that is absolutely on fire right now.
