Colors

After receiving a little attention in the underground with albums like Alaska, last year's Colors suddenly made Between The Buried And Me a very big deal indeed. Colors was one of last year's most acclaimed releases and landed the band on tour with such big names as diverse as The Dillinger Escape Plan and Dream Theater. The band formed from metalcore pioneers Prayer For Cleansing, although the band are perhaps more well-known for penning a somewhat poor taste number condoning the IRA terrorist group than for any influence on the much maligned genre. But fear not the dreaded metalcore scourge as Between The Buried And Me hail firmly from the more forward-thinking wing of the genre. As you may or may not know, Colors is essentially one epic hour-long song broken up into 8 sections. These take in skin-flaying blasts (Foam Born B: The Decade Of Statutes) gorgeous cleanly strummed sections (The Sun Of Nothing) and erm, a hoedown (Ants Of The Sky). So yes, the band's sub-Mr Bungle attempts to be “wacky” are utterly cringe-inducing (the bizarre French accent vocalist Tommy Rogers adopts on Prequel To The Sequel is horrific). But these moments are both few and far between and mercifully brief, nothing that could drag the album down. It's remarkably well put-together, rising and falling enough to make the hour's listening surprisingly easy. Fantastic moments are everywhere on this record. Instrumental Viridian is basically one big build-up to closer White Walls, and what a pay-off it is. That opening riff is one of the most epic moments in metal history, and the entire song is a suitably fitting climax to the journey, taking in the brutality of The Decade Of Statutes to the beauty of The Sun Of Nothing, the galloping speed metal that opens Ants Of The Sky to the slightly more conventional melodies of Prequel To The Sequel. The record closes in a circular fashion, with the same bittersweet piano melody that opened it. Every musician who plays here is on fire, each movement containing non-stop fretboard wizardry without ever crossing into the realm of wank. Vocalist Tommy Rogers utilizes unusual layered clean singing as well as the standard metalcore growls, and coupled with his keys it adds a dash of much needed, ahem, color. My only concern for the band is just how they will follow such a massive album up. A staggering amount of effort has clearly been put into Colors, with every riff being spectacularly technical and complex. It's giant, overblown, and brilliant, and to be honest, anything the band do on a smaller scale will feel well, a little too easy. It's status as a future classic is unquestionable, but in time Colors may prove to be the world's biggest anchor around Between The Buried And Me's collective necks.