COLORS

Formerly metalcore with a touch of a prog, Between the Buried and Me have released their magnum opus, Colors, an album which makes it doubtless that they are now a prog band with a touch of metalcore.

Over eight tracks, sixty-four minutes, and a trillion time and style changes, they paint an abstract concept album for the listener about the world, told in furious vignettes. From opening piano ballad "Foam Born: The Backtrack" to seizure-inducing fourteen minute closer "White Walls", the record passes through every imaginable movement and genre and does so without ever seeming forced a la THE HUMAN ABSTRACT or, God forbid I say it, OPETH. The playing is incredibly technical, without going off the deep end into self- indulgence. Hell, there's only a couple true guitar solos in the whole affair.

The harsh vocals still run that RED CHORD-BLACK DAHLIA MURDER spectrum of screamy death growls, but Tommy Rogers' clean vocals are reminiscent of pretty-throated singers like Jon Anderson and James LaBrie, but unlike those two, with a healthy dosage of balls.

This album has done for some old curmudgeony progsters what OPETH did for them around the time Still Life came out. It has showed them that not all "extreme metal" is just violence-condoning, Satan-hailing guttural nonsense (although I do enjoy a good bit of this as well). Probably the first truly "crossover" metalcore band to reach a non-scenester audience, BTBAM have made use of their skills and made a prog album that will stand the test of time.