Between the Buried and Me – Colors II

We live in a time where sequels and call-backs are done to death. Take your artistic medium of choice and witness the litany of hackneyed cash-grabs attempting to tug on your nostalgic heartstrings. On the boldly stated Colors II, Between the Buried and Me buck the trend and deliver on the promise of following up an all-time classic. As a standalone, this album is a gigantic, progressive gymnastics routine packed to the absolute gills with instrumental mastery and compositional/genre fuckery, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen. Taken as another rainbow block of molded clay to be affixed onto their 2007 construction, what we have here is a balls-to-the-white-walls two-part epic that reframes their entire sprawling discography. No matter where you lie along the prog metal appreciation spectrum – this deserves your ears, if only as a reference point for what’s possible. – Inoculaeted