Reviews

Colors

Between The Buried And Me

Released: Sep 18, 2007
Label: Victory Records
Reviewed by: Tim Creter
6 comments

It is no coincidence that the album art to possesses the same rainbow stripe as Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of Colorsthe Moon." Both albums are examples of experienced live bands fully exploring the spectrum of the studio. And yes, if you're a "hardcore kid" who plays an instrument and do not own that album, you are an idiot. Of course I haven't talked to the ‘Buried guys, so I assume it's an homage to the Floyd instead of a concept album about Dennis Hopper's 1988 film starring Sean Penn fused with Gay Pride. But I digress, because it takes BALLS to call your album Colors and release it to the kids who will no doubt sum up the work with quick judgments like "I don't get it" or "it's weird." Fuck all that. Learn your guitar, play with your tone for a few years, then talk. Hell, play music live on the road and try to keep your creative spark going for more than three years. It's tough.

Temple atmospheres, hack and slash breakdowns, piano ballads, acoustic guitars, vocal vomiting, DragonForce-esque speedy solos, metal, hardcore, rock, and pop have all been thrown into the blender here, but not haphazardly, mind you. This album is anything but messy. If colors are the true paint here, and the canvas is the studio, the result is not Jackson Pollack but more Picasso: dazzling, controlled, practiced, and ahead of its time.

I haven't heard an album this intriguing from a band so clearly leaving their receptors open since OK Computer, nor have I heard a so-called hardcore album this asymmetrical in song structure and sonic alchemic experiments since Until Your Heart Stops. The reflective moments in "Foam Born (A)" and "Sun of Nothing" are downright weepy in their sincerity. But before you actually do weep, the band has changed its sound three times since you looked up at your speakers. There is no boredom here. The pace is quick and perfect; the variety is seemingly endless. In short, this is Rush and Tool doing grind. But to stop at that description would do Colors a grave injustice.

This album is clearly a band having fun while they eat, sleep, and drink (check the sound effects on "Ants of the Sky") their music. This is the album Steve Austin wishes he could make (sorry) as it is as visceral and experimental as Today is the Day but lacks the pretension and the intentional hatred. Colors invites the listener on a journey beyond assumptions and expectations while bitch-slapping music's collective unconscious. I might actually have to go see them live now.

Between the Buried and Me are clearly Victory's most talented band and this album is nothing short of remarkable. Colors is truly a glorious achievement that should expand the band's audience slowly over the years as most works of genius tend to do. Do not be shocked to hear Between the Buried and Me's name mentioned in the same conversations as Mastodon for sheer musicality and adventurous attitudes towards heavy music.