Review Summary: Tommy Mercury / Vertical Alpha 420
Between the Buried and Me's single
Vertical Beta 461 began as
Boot Dagger Boogie, which was an instrumental track written by BTBAM's guitarist Paul Waggoner for Magna Carta Records' 2009 compilation album
Guitars That Ate My Brain. In 2016, the band remastered the track, added vocals to it, changed its name, and released it, along with a cover of Queen's most famous rhapsody, as a 7-inch vinyl. These two tracks have next to nothing in common with one another, and given that BTBAM has (as far as I could find) never publicly talked in-depth about this release, my theory is that they wanted to release one of the songs on vinyl for a cash-grab (probably the
Bohemian Rhapsody cover), but needed a minimum of two songs, and thus they revamped
Boot Dagger Boogie.
I've heard some atrocious
Bohemian Rhapsody covers over the years, and music fans are always going to be quick to come at musicians who attempt the task with verbal and type-written baseball bats and pitchforks, but BTBAM's cover is one of the better ones that I've heard. The band sticks closely to the original both vocally and instrumentally, with Tommy opting entirely for clean vocals, and with the instrumentalists for the most part respecting the original notations. The most noticeable liberty that the band took is that Waggoner, who is very much the star of this two-track single, sometimes uses a guitar lick in place of some of the higher-pitched vocal lines, like "gal-ee-lay-oh", and "let him go!". I'm sure this is one of few renditions of the song that Freddie would be proud of, despite a plethora of fans and opponents of BTBAM alike scratching their heads and wondering why the band bothered to do this in the first place.
On the other hand,
Vertical Beta 461 received a lot of praise upon release, and is still considered a favorite amongst many BTBAM fans. The track, originally released in 2009 but probably written even earlier, contains much of the erratically melodic guitar-play that was present in BTBAM's
Alaska and
Colors-era music, which tends to be their most highly-regarded. Although it was written as an instrumental, Tommy's harsh vocals fit onto the track like a glove, making it sound like any other BTBAM song of its time. The track also contains an impressive bass solo at the three-minute mark by Dan Briggs, which happens to be my favorite moment of his across all of BTBAM's discography.
With
Bohemian Rhapsody / Vertical Beta 461 being a self-released vinyl exclusive, it often gets overlooked by the BTBAM's casual fanbase, with the reputation of cover songs β especially Queen covers β not helping it's case. But anyone who enjoys
Alaska,
Colors, and/or
The Great Misdirect owes it to themselves to at least give
Vertical Beta 461 a listen, as it contains a lot of the now long-gone charm that the band had during the mid to late 2000's.
