Once a fresh and exciting band on the rise in my youth, Between The Buried And Me now have two decades to name. To my ears, their identity settled around the landmark record Colors. Since then its been a string of familiar and fun romps, blasting a Progressive Metal brandished by their particular flavor. With a recent personal desire to branch out I wanted to skip this one by, feeling that Between had become a little predictable with ambitious by design music. Then again, this is the sequel to the album with Prequel To The Sequel! Colors II! Surely something special is at play?
Either by exhaustion, saturation or my mood, sadly my enjoyment cannot say this is worthy of the title. Beyond that, the music has played out like a sporadic array of twisting aggression, sudden pivots and crowded complications has the instruments often cramming in a lot of unnecessary texture and notation that its songs end up like disorienting river rapids. Some arrangements, riffs and moments have power, intrigue and excitement but mostly it drones on as its mammoth eighty minutes grind away.
I can't help but feel that Tommy's harsh, snarling shouts added to this grinding feeling. The album is interspersed with beautiful clean singing and non metallic instrumentation which often amounted to my favorite moments when the unrelenting subsides. That's when themes flourish and melodies lead the way but some of them too get a little to self indulged too. Progressive music like this is a tightrope to walk. In this case I felt as if it came of with more thought than feeling. Too much of the record is unnecessarily complicated and overloaded, amounting to an overly busy set of songs with some moments of fun and grooves sprinkled throughout.
Rating: 5/10