Review Summary: Fuck you Between the Buried and Me.
What a piece of ***ing ***. Between the Buried and Me’s penultimate LP is frequently dubbed as being the greatest metal release of the last decade, an essential for all that live, breathe and fart heavy metal. But in all honesty, why are BtBaM so commonly labelled as the second coming of jesus?
Ability to play instruments at extreme speeds when necessary?
Check!
Change one small technicality compared to everyone else to seem innovative?
Check!
Write really long songs to make album interesting?
Check!
There we have it. Colors and Between the Buried and Me manage to tick all the boxes required to create a modern-day ‘masterpiece.’ Yet there is one major flaw in BtBaM’s brain-child.
The ability to sound good .
It went like this:
Five men was all it took. It was a steaming hot day on December 13th, 1990. The five talented young lads that occupy BtBaM all met up for the first time in a wine cellar, south of Texas. One kid liked polka music. Another liked extreme grindcore. Another liked melodic death metal. Another liked acoustic indie. The final member of BtBaM – the drummer- liked KISS. He was fired immediately and replaced with someone who held progressive space rock in high respect. One would think that with all these differing musical ideologies, a band would not be able to rise from the ashes of their miserable lives. Unfortunately, we were all wrong.[/i]
Between the Buried and Me’s first and foremost mistake is their inability to mash all of their influences into a smooth, consistent record. This dilemma was apparent on their previous releases, yet its frighteningly apparent on Colors. Merely making it through one of these songs is an ear-splitting, reckless adventure where you come out worse for wear. On the rare occasion BtBaM pull something coherent out of their ass, it is instantly ruined by something as equally incoherent. The opening song ‘The Backtrack,’ displays the good, the bad and the ugly of BtBaM in just over two minutes. And this is undeniably the most likeable track off the record. The piano refrain that kicks off the album is calming and nice, misleading the listener into believing that they are in for an enjoyable ride. Out of nowhere BtBaM implant a riff, yet this is not the worst thing that could’ve occurred, because the riff is actually decent. Yet it doesn’t take long for BtBaM to *** up any potential they had, as they lay down a really poor converge type phrase that, although only lasting 30 seconds, is enough to put anybody off.
Perhaps the worst thing about this album is the ***ing length. This is often labelled as a 65 minute song. 65 minutes of BtBaM??? Ewwww. This is one aspect in which BtBaM fail miserably (along with nearly everything else). There are no breaks, no rests, just endless BtBaM. This is perhaps the worst thing they could’ve chosen to do, as many already found them to be wanky and insufferable, but the length of a Dream Theater album spooned into one long song simply crossed the line. Arguably there are rests, where they break down into cool, clean guitar phases that lighten the mood and add a slight atmosphere to Colors. Yet it doesn’t take long for them to ruin whatever good they were doing with a stupid riff or poorly constructed melody that seems to go on and on without having an endpoint. Nearly every riff and every melodious solo within this album sounds forced, over-produced and downright awful. ‘Ants of the Sky,’ is a perfect example, containing crazy guitar melodies that ear-splitting rather than soothing.
Who else can think of a band that does this? That has insanely fast guitars, riffs, talents but lack in song-writing and execution.
You got it.
DragonForce.
Although DragonForce have commonly been abused for doing the same thing over and over again, they atleast, have not sunk to BtBaM’s level. Colors does contain this vital characteristic (vital to make an album bad that is). Although literally each individual track no Colors is not the same as the previous, they do repeat themselves by continuously ***ing up anything that sounds good with something incredibly stupid. This is repeated throughout the album on multiple occasions, which shapes this record to not only be ***ing horrible, but also ridiculously frustrating.
Oh and the vocals suck really hard. The screams sound strained and forced, and the clean vocals really needed a lot of work before they could be executed in this ‘progressive metalcore,’ album. Tommy Rogers growls make me sick to the stomach, and his cleans sound worse than when Matt Heafey tries to copy James Hettfield. They are nasally and insufferable, almost as if hes singing with a blocked nose.
Can someone get him a tissue?
Oh right they’re BtBaM they’re busy wanking hard.
Jokes aside, this album has bucket-loads of potential to be something different, something new. Yet Between the Buried and Me showed that on all of Colors’ predecessors without any luck. I think it’s time we gave up on BtBaM and started listening to real progressive.
