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Alaska takes listeners on a journey that is beautiful while being disastrous and poignant while remaining punishing. They created a new sound and refreshingly unique vision in the universe of heavy music. Victory Records. 2005.
Being that I didn't really enjoy The Silent Circus, I wasn't even aware that Between the Buried and Me was coming out with a new album. And when I heard clips from a number of songs, and all of "Selkies", I knew I had a tough decision to make. Should I fork over the loot to buy the album?
This time, the money was well spent. First off, this band is heavier than any other I have heard on Victory Records; at times they drop into sludgy death marches more reminiscent of Morbid Angel than any band on their own label. Short, but oh so sweet, is one of my favorites, "Croakies and Boatshoes", a song that would have fit very well on Domination.
The longer tracks, "All Bodies", "Selkies", "Roboturner", and "Backwards Marathon" are the ones that should have the entire metal world's attention, though. "Selkies" begins with an almost Reroute to Remain feel, but this band is no In Flames clone. Over the next 6 minutes, the song weaves through increasingly intense passages with ever-changing tempos, inaudibly fast riffs, chilling death metal progressions, calm acoustic passages with clean singing, and epic power-progressive metal buildups. I have yet to hear a metal album this year that drags the listener so constantly through rapidly shifting extreme emotions.
After this review is finished, I'm going to give The Silent Circus another listen. In my mad dash to find bands that remind me of bands I already know and love, I may have skipped over a band which exemplifies what I love about music: raw aggression, jaw-dropping musical ability, no fear of taking risks, and palpable emotion that spills forth from the speakers in a variety of melodic and downright brutal manifestations.Read more ›
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
For a lot of bands, being memorable means writing inoffensive, cookie-cutter hit singles with a few irresistible hooks and huge choruses that listeners can hum along with when they hear it playing from a local rock radio station. But North Carolina's quintet, Between The Buried And Me, spit on that rule book, shred it, and throw its remains out the window, opting instead to be memorable the old-fashioned way -- with brilliant songwriting, top-notch musicianship, and a sound all their own.
BTBAM's junior release, 2005's "Alaska" (a second for Victory Records), is the ultimate style/genre blender, mixing together hardcore and metalcore, technical death metal, and grindcore with a heavy mathcore influence, and even a fair amount of progressive metal and free jazz elements. (In other words, imagine Dillinger Escape Plan, Necrophagist, Cephalic Carnage, Meshuggah, Dream Theater, and Neurosis all playing at once, and you'll get the general idea.) Thus, this record isn't a snug fit for any one genre, but every influence can be heard equally. It perfectly balances just the right amounts of harmony, dissonance, restrained tempos, off-the-wall lunacy, head-spinning technicality, crazy time signatures, turn-on-a-dime tempo changes, crushing heaviness, and infectious melody, making it one of the most colorful, complex, intricate, engrossing, well-balanced, and textured heavy music releases of recent memory.
The album begins with one of its most meticulous and symphonic numbers, "All Bodies." It starts with a forceful, deeply grooving rhythm made up of muscular, churning riffs, a gluey bass line, and pounding drums.Read more ›
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I saw these guys open for Dillinger Escape Plan about a month ago, and they impressed me enough to pick this up. I knew they were good, but man was I in for a surprise.
This band seems to love all the music I do. All the elements of my favorite music are combined into one kick ass metal album, the way they juxtapose all these styles can only be compared to Opeth. On this album you can hear nods to Emperor, In Flames, Opeth, various jazz, King Crimson, some metalcore and Morbid Angel among others. However, this band has most definitely got it's own personality and style, and it comes not in the kind of riffs and melodies they play but more in how they put it together. This band has a VERY original composition style... so many little details, unexpected riff switches, so many sections to each song. It's hard to make sense of at first, but these guys most definitely know what they're doing and the way they put things together DOES make sense, it just requires some active listening (much like Meshuggah... speaking of which these guys can do the polyrhythm thing too).
The production is fantastic, kind of Gothenburg guitar sound.
1. All Bodies (9/10) A 3 part 'mini-epic' beginning with a heavy section that sort of loses its momentum in all of the tempo changes. However, the kick ass chorus melody really fixes things up. The second part 'The Discovery' is VERY Emperor, in other words it f**king rocks. The last part is a reprise of the fantastic chorus. Doesn't flow as well as some of the other tracks, though. I think the song is about the hope that there is an afterlife and that our souls are not 'mortal'.
2. Alaska (8/10) VERY heavy and great for headbanging / moshing but not too much melodic value, aside from the intro. Very strange lyrics.Read more ›
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