Review: Between The Buried And Me - The Great Misdirect

Say what you will about Between The Buried And Me - and people, fans and haters alike, have plenty to say - but one indisputable fact about the band is that they’re not afraid to take chances.  BTBAM have gained renown and notoriety for being one of the most ambitious and stylistically versatile bands in the current metalcore scene.  Really, the band deserves quite a bit of credit for heightening the metalcore genre’s overall level of quality and exposure amongst fans of other genres, taking a depressingly mediocre and incestuous musical culture and injecting it with new energy.  Ever since their self-titled debut, BTBAM have unflinchingly blended their roaring, highly technical brand of metalcore with snippets of all kinds of other genres.  A power-metal bridge, complete with King Diamond-esque falsetto in between the growls?  Sure, why not?  Acoustic ballads?  Got ‘em.  A straight-faced bossa nova track to close the fantastic Alaska album?  Heck yeah.  I mean, Christ, the track “Ants Of The Sky” off of Colors has a freaking hoe-down section.  That takes balls.  Despite their widely-ranged musical detours, though, it’s obvious by now that BTBAM are prog fans to the core.  Colors ended up being one of the most epic and intense albums released in 2007 - more so than even Dream Theater’s effort that year (whom several members of BTBAM cite as influences).  Although many old-school BTBAM aficionados were disappointed by a reduced amount of pure, undiluted brutality compared to their older albums, the band gained a hugely expanded fanbase in the prog community.  So the big question on everyone’s mind in late 2009 was: will the new BTBAM album, The Great Misdirect, measure up to Colors in terms of sheer musical audacity, crushing heaviness, or jaw-dropping epic-ness?

Well, the answer isn’t quite a simple yes or no, but The Great Misdirect is a hell of an album, no matter what you compare it to.  One of the key differences between this album and Colors is that each song is a more-or-less independent piece of music, instead of being separate-but-connected parts to an overall whole.  This isn’t a bad thing at all - it gives each of the six tracks their own identity and makes for an even more varied listening experience.  And while the album does engage in its share of genre-jumping, it seems like the band has reined in some of their more bizarre musical impulses this time around.  Nothing as out-of-left-field as the infamous hoe-down pops up this time - the most head-turning passage is probably the intro to “Fossil Genera - A Feed From Cloud Mountain,” which features out-of-tune circus-piano chords and Mike Patton-esque, vaguely creepy “la-la” vocals.  It’s certainly disorienting enough, however, especially coming out of the pulverizing ending of the previous track, “Disease, Injury, Madness.”  None of this is to say that these songs are any less schizophrenic and meandering in nature than you’d expect from the band.  Their digressions are just a little less weird, that’s all.  If any sort of influence rears its head often enough to be considered a theme, it’s that of straightforward, headbanging groove rock riffs: the aforementioned “Disease, Injury, Madness” and epic album closer “Swim To The Moon” both feature lengthy instrumental sections in which the band gets a chance to stretch out and jam on a musical idea, explore it, play some solos over it, and move on to the next one.  Some of these passages hearken back to the old-school metal and prog-rock that the members of the band were raised on, such as the fantastic, restrained-yet-relentlessly-building solo section of “Obfuscation;” others, however, show a bit more contemporary influence, such as the industrial programming in a particular section of “Fossil Genera.”  Even though they’ve dialed back on the eccentricity, this stuff isn’t boring by a long shot.  (To drive the point home, just listen to the two shortest tracks on the album: the jazz-influenced opener “Mirrors” and the late-album acoustic ballad “Desert Of Song.”  Not only are they the farthest the band strays from their core sound on this album, they’re two of the best songs here, and the band sounds just as confident and self-assured playing this material as they do blast-beating away with all their might.)

Despite the slight changes in musical color and influence, however, this is mostly the same BTBAM we know and love from the last few records, and the material here packs no less punch.  Fans of the breakneck technical metal that has run through the band’s entire career should find a lot to enjoy - perhaps even more than on Colors.  Those who listen to the band for the sake of highly virtuosic playing will definitely not be disappointed - these guys continue to step up their game without fail in terms of playing ability and compositional audacity with every release, and this one is no exception.  And those hoping for something as huge and epic-sounding as their last couple albums should be more than satisfied by this one - “Fossil Genera” and “Swim To The Moon” in particular both feature two of the most sweeping, grandiose ending passages in the band’s catalogue, or anyone else’s, for that matter.  The Great Misdirect will eternally be compared to Colors, and that’s a shame, because it’s just as solid an album.  While it might not be quite as risky or cohesive as its predecessor, it delivers all the important goods one would expect from a band of BTBAM’s caliber, and that makes for an intensely enjoyable listen.  Just remember to buckle your seatbelts - it’ll be one hell of a ride.

Rating: 4.5/5

Standout Tracks:
“Swim To The Moon”
“Obfuscation”
“Fossil Genera - A Feed From Cloud Mountain”

Release Date: October 27, 2009