Review Summary: Psilocybin-core
Between the Buried and Me
Colors
Rating: 1.4/5.0
When I begin a review, I've learned that it is indeed best, for me at least, to base most of my review around some sort of event in the past which will connect into other paragraphs, thus fueling fluency and making for an effective, informative read. However, reviews are reflective of albums. Ratings are based off opinions for these albums, writing styles are even based off the quality and or genre of the album in question (Robin Smith vs. John Anderton - emo releases vs. post-rock releases), and in this spirit, I must introduce a forward explaining the informality which my review begins with. View this, if not the whole introduction, as an ironic description later on, as its prolixity has a place; its uselessness is purposeful.
Now, for the introduction.
Ayn Rand, Russian-American philosopher, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, is known most for her works,
The Fountainhead and
Atlas Shrugged, which was probably the cause of not only their epic lengths, but their utilitarian purpose: the spreading of Rand's own philosophy, Objectivism. Essentially, the philosophy revolves around these theories: reality's existence is independent of awareness; sensory perception and one's contact with reality is connected somehow; human beings' formation of knowledge is based off deductive and inductive logic, as well as the generation of concepts; the purpose of life is the exploration of one's rational self-interest and or their personal happiness; the only social system which abides by the human right of individualism, is that of pure laissez faire capitalism; and several other smaller ideas which fall underneath the aforementioned theories. Her ideas have been renowned worldwide, even though many point out that her prose (she wrote many fictional, philosophical novels along with manifestos and a statement of her artistic credo) is didactic and clumsy. Take for example, the following passage:
"Howard Roark laughed.
He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone - flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone growled, wet with sunrays. "*
However, her groundbreaking philosophy had planted enough seeds in the field of revolutionary ideas, and inspired enough college-students to gain her much posthumous acclaim. Today, this controversial philosophy has raised several questions, such as: "if Rand was such an outspoken Atheist, why does she seem to worship wealth so much?"; or "what would motivate Rand to base her philosophy off the ‘evils' of collectivism? Her thought process in forming Objectivism went along the lines of: take an accepted statement ("the Soviet Union was evil"); turn it into a generalization, like stating that all forms of collectivism were evil; taking the inverse of it and stating it as good (she outright said that pure laissez faire capitalism was the only ethical social system [she even said that Communism was a religion]); and then calling this flawed system philosophy (I mean, you can't do this with all forms of statements. In example, let's say Nazism is bad. What's the opposite of that? Why, yes, it's COMMUNISM, which is, of course considered "bad." It's a paradox that goes against not only Rand's logic, but her beliefs as well.)"; or "why wasn't Rand sued for plagiarism when
Anthem is a carbon-copy of
We?" But there's an even bigger question which lingers in, I guarantee you, all of your minds right now. It is as stated: "what does this prolix essay on the faults of Objectivism have to do with Between the Buried and Me's album
Colors?"
Well, the answer to that is a complicated one, which is most simply stated as nothing, as well as everything. Allow me to elaborate on the purpose of my four hundred fifty-one word rant.
You see,
Colors is a release which essentially magnifies the flaws of prolixity (as well as an inability to experiment in a way which isn't overly spasmodic or completely juvenile [seriously, be different, not a hodgepodge of poorly-executed genres, it's my musical pet peeve], but more on
that later) which ends up being the album's ultimate downfall. Anything which shows potential is essentially ruined by either one of two things:
1.) Between the Buried and Me simply do not realize what coherency or development of thoughts is. They'll justify inappropriate "wankery" as progressive technicality; but they continue to fail to realize that progressive ideas are completely separate from incoherent, awkward genre-juxtapositions, nor are they similar to the tried note-abuse which is such a mainstay in "progressive" metal nowadays. In this spirit, they'll flaunt their "talent" carelessly, ignorant to the fact that talent involves self control. Some people can shred, but we don't need nine-minute guitar odysseys to prove that. That's what we call a musical attention-whore. Speaking of...
2.) You remember that prolix excess? Of course you do! So let me illustrate what it's like to listen to all of these "guitar odysseys" (jam band fans rejoice) with this little piece of deja vu:
Ayn Rand, Russian-American philosopher, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, is known most for her works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which was probably the cause of not only their epic lengths, but their utilitarian purpose: the spreading of Rand's own philosophy, Objectivism. Essentially, the philosophy revolves around these theories: reality's existence is independent of awareness; sensory perception and one's contact with reality is connected somehow; human beings' formation of knowledge is based off deductive and inductive logic, as well as the generation of concepts; the purpose of life is the exploration of one's rational self-interest and or their personal happiness; the only social system which abides by the human right of individualism, is that of pure laissez faire capitalism; and several other smaller ideas which fall underneath the aforementioned theories. Her ideas have been renowned worldwide, even though many point out that her prose (she wrote many fictional, philosophical novels along with manifestos and a statement of her artistic credo) is didactic and clumsy. Take for example, the following passage:
"Howard Roark laughed.
He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone - flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone growled, wet with sunrays. "*
However, her groundbreaking philosophy had planted enough seeds in the field of revolutionary ideas, and inspired enough college-students to gain her much posthumous acclaim. Today, this controversial philosophy has raised several questions, such as: "if Rand was such an outspoken Atheist, why does she seem to worship wealth so much?"; or "what would motivate Rand to base her philosophy off the ‘evils' of collectivism? Her thought process in forming Objectivism went along the lines of: take an accepted statement ("the Soviet Union was evil"); turn it into a generalization, like stating that all forms of collectivism were evil; taking the inverse of it and stating it as good (she outright said that pure laissez faire capitalism was the only ethical social system [she even said that Communism was a religion]); and then calling this flawed system philosophy (I mean, you can't do this with all forms of statements. In example, let's say Nazism is bad. What's the opposite of that? Why, yes, it's COMMUNISM, which is, of course considered "bad." It's a paradox that goes against not only Rand's logic, but her beliefs as well.)"; or "why wasn't Rand sued for plagiarism when Anthem is a carbon-copy of We?" But there's an even bigger question which lingers in, I guarantee you, all of your minds right now. It is as stated: "what does this prolix essay on the faults of Objectivism have to do with Between the Buried and Me's album Colors?"...
And that's only the second track! Frenetic guitar lines will suddenly die out into long "psychedelic" drones, which seem to go off without notice (I seriously think the members drone out as a result of boredom while writing songs), and allow the listener to zone out (think of "Cassandra Gemini" by The Mars Volta... yeah it's that bad), or dive into incoherent splurges of formulaic verbosity of which the likes of whoever has ingested several psilocybin mushrooms has never seen nor imagined (not even on the astral plane), because well, let's face it, there's that prolixity, as well as Between the Buried and Me's unwarranted (unfathomable, more like) desire to go off into overly technical tangents. But there are more things which are necessary to examine. They are as follows:
A.) Tommy Rogers is a part of the band. Rogers specializes in the warped sonic assault of a mouth whose source of fame came from the vocoder. It's an awkward site to hear, it is, to listen to Rogers's scraggly, crackling offerings to the gods of all things trite. This is amplified when against such a polar backdrop. Instead of intriguing, the effect is completely unwarranted. He yells in his pitchy, volatile tone while the band practices their psychedelic brand of "dronology," but neither component is even decent as a whole, and it comes as no surprise that the irascibility of it all is irritating, to say the least. It may sound apt elsewhere, when the band bursts into more intense angularity, but even then, it's nothing noteworthy.
B.) Amphetamine Beat Poetry... it's er... Amphetamine Beat Poetry (written by a twelve year old scene kid I think but that's not as much of a hindrance when in this context, now is it?)
C.) The lack of distinguishable features from song to song. To be more specific: if one were to pile up all the decent aspects of Between the Buried and Me's
Colors and separate them from the disjointed attempts at world music/revivalism/"vanguard" sociology, then one could have a four-minute-long metalcore song. On its own, this single song would be a decent reflection into the band's past. However, if you had to do the same process with said "disjointed attempts at world music/revivalism/‘vanguard' sociology," then you would have the same sort of meandrous epic which is akin to a bad trip on blotter papers, or perhaps even blue gels. So, of course, this journey through polka music, folk, medieval score, and electronic/industrial amalgams should be disjointed. But any sensible songwriter would use some sort of segue. Too bad that Between the Buried and Me have lost all signs of sensible songwriting skills, for, as of now, that winding, humdrum delve into "technicality" is the entirety of
Colors. I'd like to say that Between the Buried and Me are visionaries, but I simply cannot muster up the delusional grasp, nor the inhumanity with which it takes to utter such an unpardonable lie. Between the Buried and Me are transgressors in a field of music where awful thrash riffage, poor use of ambience, circus music, polka interludes, scat, hip-hop, salsa, jazz syncopation, acoustic music, and a lack of wherewithal with which all this could be coherent (if even just interesting), and so, it warrants the score, and metaphor (irony) which this review serves as.
-Dryden the Deviant
- - -
*Taken from Rand's novel,
The Fountainhead: page 15 of the Centennial Edition published by Signet.
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