Send "Between The Buried And Me " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 A new Between the Buried and Me album means a new locomotive, and this time the hype-train is chugging along faster than ever. For most fans of the band, Colors was a landmark release. Alaska was, in a lot of ways, just another take on The Silent Circus. A shittier one, at that. But Colors brought something new. Not only did it finally make full use of one-time session musicians Blake, Dan and Dustie, but it pushed the band further into their earlier hinted progressive tendencies. Problem is, Colors was actually kind of a mess. Most of the songs were too long, they featured awkward, sloppy (or sometimes nonexistent) transitions. The heavy parts were regurgitated from their past works (sometimes verbatim) and the off-kilter, 'wacky' parts in “Sun of Nothing” and “Ants of the Sky” seemed like they were only there to fill up space and show us that the band has a fun side. Of course I'm nit-picking, Colors was still pretty fucking good, but it was obviously the beginning of a transition, one I think they've completed on The Great Misdirect.The Great Misdirect is very much a structural refinement of Colors. It's in the same vein, but better in every way. Like its predecessor, The Great Misdirect also starts with a softer number, but unlike “Foam Born”, “Mirrors” feels like a fully developed song instead of a passing thought. The Great Misdirect also ends with a long-running epic, but we'll get to that later. First, I want to revisit those aforementioned 'wacky' parts. You know the ones I'm referring to; the Bungle-esque philandering in “Sun of Nothing” and the “Shevanel” revisiting bluegrass from “Ants of the Sky”. Technically speaking, those parts were well done. But they were totally fucking pointless in the context of the songs, and they tragically cheapened what was otherwise the best one-two punch on the album. It felt like the band was laughing at us, showing off with a mildly retarded charm reminiscent of MadTV's Stewart. “Look what I can do” repeated over and over and over. As an indicator of the refinement that took place between albums, the wackiness actually takes centre stage on “Fossil Genera”, but it's a flip of the script when its swinging circus aesthetic fits more comfortably within their sound than genre-typical instrumental flexing. No, The Great Misdirect's flow isn't chopped by left-of-centre Patton-isms, but what I'd like to call the Prog Nation effect. No song makes this more evident than the 18 minute (and ten minutes too long) “Swim to the Moon”....full text |
| Allmusic |
| After Between the Buried and Me pushed metalcore purists away with their most progressive release, Colors, they decided to push even harder for their fifth release. A diverse outing with an unruly amount of genres crammed into only six songs, The Great Misdirect is a highly adventurous, very convoluted, wildly dynamic, and extremely difficult listen. Briggs, Waring, Rogers, Waggoner, and Richardson are in top form, with their script-flipping abilities intact and their technical chops at their most extreme. This is a guitarist's album first and foremost (although bass players and drummers are in for a treat as well), and the playing, while showy, is incendiary. Like a cross between Dream Theater (with whom they toured in 2008) and Dillinger Escape Plan, Between the Buried and Me meld creative aptitude and roaring fury as they skate genres, stapling together speed metal, hardcore, carnival jazz, chamber pop, and a few indefinable Mike Patton-esque styles. "Fossil Genera -- A Feed from Cloud Mountain" fuses loungy Henry Mancini piano with metal guitar and guttural growls in a lighthearted way, but this only lasts for a few minutes; the song takes a dark turn into eight minutes of screaming speed metal before seguing into an epic orchestral outro with syrupy singing by vocalist Tommy Rogers. To fit the many moods, Rogers readily switches moods between painful howls and heartfelt singing (with lyrics mainly dealing with alien abductions, the inner workings of the human brain, and magic), but he passes the microphone to guitarist Paul Waggoner for "Desert of Song," a relatively straightforward acoustic Dirt-era Alice in Chains ballad, which builds to a thick finish. It's merely a breather, however, and after five and a half minutes to recoup, the band goes out with "Swim to the Moon": nearly 18 minutes of unflappable and razor-sharp prog metal -- whirlwind scales, snaking solos, and amazingly intricate rhythm twists -- with hair-raising howls, parted by radio rock harmonies. It's an experience, to say the least. At the same time, The Great Misdirect is the type of overblown record that asks the question, "Is there such thing as being too ambitious?"...full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| Underground metal subgenres proliferate with a speed and inanity that has its closest analogue in the '90s electronica scene. But whereas electronica's divisions and transformations were spurred by new technology, there seems to be little behind the distinction between, say, "death metal," "black metal," and "metalcore" than the most obnoxious brand of scene politics. Trying to cultivate their own sound in that context, it's easy to understand why Between the Buried and Me's albums always seem to be accompanied by an agenda, whether that's proving that a metalcore band can play with as much technical skill as their straight-metal colleagues (The Silent Circus), proving that their auspicious debut was no fluke (Alaska), or proving that a genre-defying prog act can double as an emotionally riveting listen for people who care nothing about wonky progressions or time-signature changes (Colors). Where the The Great Misdirect works—and by and large it does—it's because Between the Buried and Me finally sounds like a band with nothing to prove. In their three previous albums, the band left nary a genre untouched, from bluegrass to hardcore punk, laid down some truly righteous guitar solos, and earned a reputation as one of the most promising young metal acts in the U.S. But through it all they've largely evaded establishing their own sound: Their back catalogue rocks unbelievably hard as a collection of singular feats but desperately lacks a statement of intent. Approaching the second decade of their career, the band has finally started to think hard about what a Between the Buried and Me album should sound like. And so the album's biggest surprise is that it doesn't make any great leaps forward. Having already demonstrated their mastery of so many musical styles, the band wisely focuses on integration. Colors may have been exhilarating, but it was also chaotic and oddly paced—in short, a mess. Here, the many genre styles, moods, and textures that contributed to that album's eclectic fury return, but with more attentiveness to transition and subtlety. Instead of looking at an 11-minute track as an opportunity to cram seven or eight movements into a single song, Between the Buried and Me try, on "Obfuscation," to make the connection between melodic blues soloing and breakneck thrash clear, or on "Fossil Genera," to make Tommy Roger's Mike Patton impersonations cohere with his falsetto theatrics. In that track's final stunning minutes, a lush, orchestral coda blooms out of the anarchic metal bridge; in an earlier incarnation, Between the Buried and Me would have just piled on the strings and left the listener to figure it out. For progressive musicians, there is a tendency to interpret craftsmanship solely in terms of virtuosity and unpredictability, but Great Misdirect wisely allows nuance to be part of the equation....full text |
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