THE SILENT CIRCUS

Although their debut album was already a very progressive form of metalcore, BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME really upped their game on their second release THE SILENT CIRCUS. Part of this was in the drumming duty exchange of percussionists as Will Goodyear parted ways and Mark Castillo joined the noisefest, but the biggest change is in the inclusion of various other metal and non-metal styles to the mix. On this one there are unexpected outbursts of all types of bizarre contrasting genres that can last for a few seconds (like marching band drumming) or go off into a whole lengthy sequence (such as atmospheric indie rock). If that wasn't enough the music just seems more extreme and the songwriting is better as well although i personally find the debut eponymous release to be of fairly high quality in the songwriting as well, it's just that the band managed to find new ways to spice up the music and make the tracks stand on their own unlike the debut where the formula became a tad repetitive by the time the end neared.

This is the typically progressive metalcore that BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME delivers on all their earlier albums but with more weirdness than the debut. There are moments of extreme metal riffs that have the most messed up time sigs possible, moments of the bass slinking up and down the scales like a possessed caterpillar from hell and Tommy Rogers screams like an alien is bursting out of his stomach. This is really as extreme as this type of metal can get and that's exactly why i like it so much! While upon first listen this may sound like the typical metalcore with a few tricks and gimmicky trinkets thrown in for good measure, the band manages to create a huge variety of riff attacks, bass lines, drum rolls and screaming frenzies with various genre hopping escapes into clean vocal alternative metal, atmospheric space prog reminding me a bit of Porcupine Tree with bluesy melodic guitar solos and then can hop, skip and jump into extreme mathcore such as by headache masters Psyopus.

A giant leap in their technique proved BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME weren't just your run of the mill extreme metal band. They display all the fury and energetic prowess of the most hardcore bands in the biz but they equally show off their love of progressive rock and pull it off with ease, both in playing the prog and metal simultaneously and apart. All these meanderings keep the album from getting stale and one dimensional throughout the entire ten tracks. While the tracks can seem jittery and ever changing, the final track "The Need For Repetition" offers a nice groove metal type of riff that repeats and casts a hypnotic spell. One of the things i dislike about this album is that it has one of those annoying pointless hidden tracks after track ten and several minutes of silence which is basically just a rant with some thrash metal and a guitar solo backing up the riffs. Not as good as later albums like "Colors" but still an excellent album for those who like their metalcore decorated with nice proggy frosting.