Between the Buried and Me - The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues
So here we have the Metal Blade debut from Raleigh’s veteran heavyweights, a 3-song EP of brand spanking new material. But this is Between the Buried and Me we’re talking about, so this 3-song “EP” is longer than Reign in Blood and any Metalcore/Deathcore full-length album in the last 8 years. It’s essentially three 10-minute slabs of genre bending mind rape. In the first five minutes of “Specular Reflection” alone, we are treated to a bevy of different styles. BtBaM come at the listener softer than a wet baby’s ass one minute, then the next riff is capable of creating a circle pit that could invade North Korea. Their virtuoso mix of Prog and Metalcore is unparalleled at this level, and Hypersleep Dialogues shows them expanding their pallet to even more refined moments of pure Death Metal fury, Indie Rock sincerity, and… what the fuck? Did I just hear a fucking Polka arrangement? Seriously? They just did a Polka thing that was fucking weird. “Augment of Rebirth,” towards the end. This is, like, the sixth time I’ve listened to this all the way through. Never noticed the Polka thing with the accordion. Wow. This is clearly the type of recording that you can take something new from, that you didn’t notice before, with each listen. And of course the Polka part is followed by crushing heaviness. What makes all of these wacky transitions seamless is vocalist Tommy Rogers. He has great harsh vocals, he has a great singing voice. He makes everything work (and he can pull it off live). I guess if anything is lacking here it’s the signifying anthem I was hoping for to usher in this new chapter of their career. Sure, there are anthemic qualities to some of the segments of these epic tracks, but there is also some noisy filler and masturbatory Prog noodling you have to sift through to get there. If anything, these guys always leave you wondering what they’ll do next. (I have to subtract a quarter of a point for the Polka shit, though. I mean, c’mon.)
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