Between the Buried and Me - Automata I

After the band’s huge, mostly straight-up progressive metal outing in 2015, Coma Ecliptic (which was preceded by the even more gigantic The ParallaxEP/LP duo), Between the Buried and Me are back on track with the first of three releases from their 2017 recording sessions: the first half of the Automata concept album (an LP technically, but not much longer than The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues), which will be followed by the second half, and then an EP of other material from those sessions. Choosing to space out their releases this way was probably a good idea, as the quite lengthy installments of their material can be overwhelming even to some prog-heads; this move making listening to the full album in two halves a perfectly manageable feat for anyone.
Despite the music being brought to the table in a much less enormous serving this time, the first half of the full concept album is both filling and ultimately titillating, leaving me wanting the rest right now; the music being so focused on digestibility and beautiful sounds not being put on the back burner to fulfill the narrative.
The first track, “Condemned to the Gallows” provides a gorgeous, arching, and abstract introduction that transitions from progressive death metal to calmer rock segments and more math-centric prog metal sections in the way Between the Buried and Me have long mastered.
“House Organ” is a relatively quick technical death metal tune, possibly the album’s heaviest on average, but it’s on these more death metal-focused cuts that the robotic-ness of Tommy’s death growls are highlighted. While the instrumentation is vibrant and energetic, Tommy Giles Rogers kind of walks through the odd-metered death metal vocals more like a professor reading his powerpoint slides to a class than an impassioned performer.
The album gets epic again on “Yellow Eyes”, moving through a variety of very odd time signatures and moods to end in epic and climatic fashion before slowing it down for the more relaxed prog rock tune “Millions”, which is one of Tommy’s more clean-vocal-centric performances, which he must hinder his death growls to preserve.
“Blot” ends the album in signature Between the Buried and Me epic fashion with technical death metal abound linking numerous movements in a quite indirect and interesting journey to the song’s and the album’s modestly explosive finish.
As for the concept that ties these tracks together and to the next album, I have prior knowledge through interviews the band has given of it being a narrative surrounding a main character who allows a broadcasting company that has been able to project people’s dreams to broadcast his. Reading into the lyrics, the contemplation on the type of exhibitionism this entails and entices is approached in a more poetically abstract than narrative manner. If there is indeed a structured narrative, it’s hidden deeply in the abstract lyrics and/or provided by supplemental sources (i.e. the album sleeve, music videos, etc.)
Overall, Automata I is a good start, but in a way it does feel like just that, a start. And despite their assertion that they refuse to repeat themselves, the album does in many ways end up sounding like a Between the Buried and Me coloring book (not an intentional reference to the album whose mastery will haunt every future release from them). I hope the band pull out some more truly experimental sounds and more cohesive lyricism. While I get the feeling that this will probably still end up being a pretty standard Between the Buried and Me album series, standard for them is still pretty sweet and nothing to complain too much about; and I’ve already heard much much worse this year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Image
Even though it had been in on their Bandcamp page since 2016, I was glad the more official release of Zeal & Ardor’s debut album,  Devil Is Fine , last year gave me the opportunity to talk about it (since I started this blog in 2017). Originally one of multiple solo music projects by creative eccentric Manuel Gagneux, inspired by a comical suggestion on 4Chan, Gagneux recruited ful-time members to form a complete performing band after the huge wave  Devil Is Fine  made, and I have been so pleased to see this project grow in its short time from the enthusiasm much of the metal community has shown for such an unorthodox artist. Devil Is Fine  was a short, but wildly diverse album (only 25 minutes) that blended the soulful blues of slave spirituals and other American folk with varyingly atmospheric black metal, a idea that could have gone terribly that fortunately went terrifically. While I loved  Devil Is Fine  and had it as one of my top top favorit...
Read more

Pensées Nocturnes - Grand Guignol Orchestra

Image
I have stated my distaste for the overdone try-hard edginess of the dark carnival aesthetic in film and television (and separating the band Avatar from that aesthetic has been a necessary task for me to prepare myself for their music), but something about applying it to the self-aware campiness of metal had me kind of intrigued to see what the exaggerated horror of metal could do for the often butchered scary circus aesthetic. I mentioned not too long ago that metal has always had its foot in parody through excess, and after all, isn’t the whole carnival thing supposed to be excessively cartoonish itself too? Maybe it could work. And that seems to be the hypothesis by which Pensées Nocturnes have approached this album. Pensées Nocturnes are a french band who have been rather prolific over the past decade,  Grand Guignol Orchestra  being the group’s sixth full-length album over the course of their decade-long existence. And the band have consistently sought to tinker and ...
Read more

Saor - Forgotten Paths

Image
Just as the new year delivered a new pair of Panopticon songs, so it gave us a new album from Andy Marshall’s Saor, a similarly naturalistic and folky solo project blending Scottish, rather than Appalachian, folk music with the transcendence of ambient black metal. In the visceral energy of this typically dark music form, Marshall finds strength and fortitude in the connection he makes with it to the natural world. Despite Marshall’s tendency toward sprawling compositions, their presentation of only three of them with one short outro cut to round them off clocks  Forgotten Paths  in at just over thrity-eight minutes. And in those thirty-eight minutes, Marshall really doesn’t do much more than channel the basic essence of his project. The opening title song jumps into the rushing swells of blast beats and black metal tremolo picking turned inside out to channel the silent emphatic resilience of the natural world itself portrayed so romantically in the song’s lyrics, soon e...
Read more