The Great Misdirect

Between the Buried and Me | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 26, 2009)
• Original Release Date: October 26, 2009
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Victory Records
• ASIN: B002OLN33O
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,762 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #86 in Music > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk > Post Hardcore

Editorial Reviews

2009 album from the Alt-Metal band. The human brain is a labyrinth that we will never fully comprehend. The next chapter in the pantheon of stories from the enigmatic Between The Buried and Me, entitled The Great Misdirect, gives us their inventive impressions of what this mysterious tool may be capable of. It introduces us to an elaborate cast of characters that are odd, unique, familiar and somewhat comforting. A group of outsiders trying to comprehend the strange worlds they all inhabit. From the truckers chatting about UFO sightings, to the power struggle of a cult leader, all the way to the story of a common man, leaving everything behind and floating to the middle of the ocean; The Great Misdirect is a truly enthralling adventure. The five stories that interlock within this fantastic tale is an inspiration to the creativeness that extreme metal is capable of and a testament to where the band is taking the genre.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yet another magnificent work of art., October 26, 2009

By 

Brian Rich (Moscow, Idaho) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Misdirect (Audio CD)

Between the Buried and Me has, yet again, set the bar for progressive metal.

This album is "short," offering only six songs, with the first track being somewhat of an "intro" even though it's the length of a standard song on another album. But the next five tracks give you more than enough to chew on, as the album still boasts an impressive 60 minute length.

BTBAM takes another direction with this album, proving they refuse to ever settle down and release a "Colors: the sequel" or "Alaska part II." If their S/T album was raw, if The Silent Circus was brutal, if Alaska was cold and magnificent and if Colors was whimsical and a bit psychotic, then The Great Misdirect is textured, cohesive and, at risk of sounding cliche, entirely epic.

Track 1 - Mirrors - 3:37
This track is slow, melodic, haunting and all in all a pretty laid back song. no screaming, no shred, just a relaxed, meandering tune that sets the mood nicely for...

Track 2 - Obfuscation - 9:15
This is as close to "classic" BTBAM as this album gets. Ferocious intro, brutal vocals, shredding leads, etc. etc. The song begins heavy and continues the theme until 2:30, when it breaks into a short teaser of a clean melodic breakdown, only to revert back to brutality and bounce back and forth between clean and heavy tonalities until about 5:00, when the noise collapses and the song enters a Joe Satriani-esque guitar-led melodic segment that is about as tonally perfect as music can get. The song finishes up with some already-classic vocal lines and more general awesome heaviness.

Track 3 - Disease, Injury, Madness - 11:03
This beast begins with some classic blastbeats, death metal growls and shredding guitars, and reminds me a little of some of the grim, straight-forward segments on Alaska or even The Silent Circus. Killer syncopated drum/guitar work lead into a very long, melodic and beautiful clean guitar/vocal segment at 1:50 that lasts until a gut-punching re-entry of metal around 4:50. At 6:35 there's a great guitar lick that sounds like something that would be in a Quentin Tarentino movie, leading into a southern/classic rock-style guitar solo and a long musical segment that almost sounds like it could be on a Doors or Pink Floyd album. But right when you thought it was going to end without a bang...

Track 4 - Fossil Genera - A Feed from Cloud Mountain - 12:10
Get ready for some fun that sounds like it was pulled directly from Colors but then elaborated on heavily - a wickedly evil carnival sounding intro, creepy vocals, and some background sound effects that sound like they're from a combination of the movies Saw and Beetlejuice. But right around 2:00 it breaks into a little bit more focused, yet still evil/haunting sounding metal, with some killer dual leads and syncopated drum shred that will make you shiver just a bit. Fast forward to about 8:00, when all of the metal awesomeness melts into a classic BTBAM instrumental break, with some memorable vocal lines that rise into an almost Radiohead buildup of vocals, keyboards and guitars. The song ends with a pretty piano line that is a nice seque into...

Track 5 - Desert of Song - 5:33
The second shortest song on the album, still coming in at five and a half minutes, this song is a true BTBAM first. This song is heavily inspired by 70s/80s/90s progressive rock and for the first time since The Silent Circus, features all clean vocals and zero shred. Certain parts are eerily similar to Pink Floyd, but in the famously unique BTBAM fashion. This is a beautiful song and I anticipate it will rapidly become one of my all-time BTBAM favorites just because of its significant departure from standard BTBAM stylings.

Track 6 - Swim to the Moon - 17:53 (!!)
This song might as well be a full-length album on its own. The astonishing length is matched only by the fact that it is not a gimmick - this is a nearly 18 minute long song that is worth every second of the listen. The musicianship is glorious. The production is flawless and makes the music so incredibly visual you feel more like you're watching a horror movie than you are listening to music. This song is way too long to describe in detail, but as expected, it features every tenet of BTBAM's musicianship, with a first-time-ever full-blown drum solo that will make most drummers (myself included) feel a little queasy about their future behind the kit. All I'll say is that this song has some of the best metal, the best drumming, the best vocals, the best keyboard and the best guitar shreddery you've ever heard from BTBAM.

From here, I honestly don't know where BTBAM will go. I've watched them condense (and yet expand) from a blisteringly heavy metalcore band into a progressive metal machine and beyond, and this album is the culmination of everything I've heard from them in the past seven years. My guess is that they'll take it an entirely different direction - this album is like taking the concept of White Walls and applying it to an entire album, but because of the need to keep each song somewhat cohesive, the album lacks some of the technical juxtaposition I had come to love from Alaska and Colors. Songs like Sun of Nothing, Ants in the Sky, All Bodies and Alaska feel like they are somewhat distant from the songs on The Great Misdirect. While I feel that the composition of The Great Misdirect is an expansion of the theory of BTBAM, the songs themselves are a condensation of what used to be a painfully mathematical and highly technical death metal band. Without the song "Obfuscation" and a few segments from other songs, this album would be almost entirely progressive/classic metal (with the BTBAM twist of course), lacking some of the more typical but still enjoyable metalcore brutality that was 75 percent of The Silent Circus and at least 50 percent of Alaska.

All in all, this is the kind of album that deserves the title "masterpiece" because of its cohesiveness. From cover to cover it feels like a solid, smooth, heavy ball of lead, with no protrusion distracting from the whole. Each song feels like a massive planet and the album as a whole feels like a universe. If you enjoy metal and have an open mind, this album will not fail you.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Masterpiece!, October 26, 2009

By 

Adam Sivertson "Chalino" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Misdirect (Audio CD)

Although it would be hard for any band to follow up on an album like Colors (2007) -which was 64 minutes of well crafted musical insanity-, Between the Buried and Me (BTBAM) managed to write another album which is arguably better than Colors.

The Great Misdirect is a more thorough exploration of BTBAM's diverse musical influences. It contains a wider variety of sounds and musical concepts than their previous material. The technical prowess displayed in this release is absolutely astounding. This is by far their most technical release and easily the most diverse. Blistering metal sections are often starkly contrasted with mellow, melodic sections by dramatic shifts in dynamics, making for a more satisfying musical experience.

Those looking for more of BTBAM's early metallic material may be slightly disappointed because there are longer forays into softer melodic sections. However, these softer sections are well-written and display a greater level of musical comfort and maturity on the part of the band. I love this album for its diverse influences and its unquestionable technical prowess. Any dissimilarities to previous material are inconsequential in comparison to the level of songwriting displayed on this album.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Umm..wow!!, December 2, 2009

By 

Jennifer Shaw (GPW, Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Misdirect (Audio CD)

I work in a call center which tends to be painfully boring, so to keep myself alert I listen to my ipod with one ear free for the phone.
I'm into hour 11 (yes, 11 straight hours!)of listening to this mind melting masterpiece and I'm pretty much blown away...

The Great Misdirect is by far the best album I've heard this year in ANY genre!! All the usual BTBAM componates are here but I think what sets this one apart from Colors is it's cohesiveness. Everything fits together beautifully. It's impossible for me to pick a favorite but if I was forced to, I'd say Swim to the Moon. No wait, Fossil Genera!

Thanks for reading my crappy review!