Customer Reviews

The Great Misdirect

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

I am now convinced that BTBAM are simply unable to make a bad album. The great misdirect follows in the same footsteps of Colors with a considerable musical progression, if that's even possible. This album throws brutality, melody, blues, "black metal", jazz, progressive, and experimental into a giant mesh pot and what comes out is excellence. To say this album is not a masterpiece would simply be a lie. It is the defining BTBAM album.

Each musician goes well and beyond their potential and pushes this album to the brink. We are still blessed with Brigg's masterful bass solos, Wagoner's absurdly precise guitar work, Blake's rock solid and technical drumming, Dustie's ridiculously heavy riffage, and Tommy's soaring melodies and brutal screams. This is without a doubt, the same BTBAM we have all grown to love; turned up a notch.

Another notable quality is the slick production. This album offers superb guitar tones, loud and punchy drums, crystal clear bass, and flawless keyboard work and effects throughout. An audiophiles dream come true.

From start to finish, this album is a creative, technical, and groundbreaking masterpiece. Between the buried me keep setting the standard higher and higher, leaving most others in the dust. This is the album to own for '09

After discovering this band while they toured with Dream Theater, I decided to give them a second glance. I went out and bought Colors, and haven't looked back since. This band has the musical technicality of a band that has been doing this for 30 years. These five young individuals put forth their heart and souls int the music, and it shows. Their ability to go from fast and heavy to slow, toned down, and melodic astounds me. This is my album of the year, and I suggest to any progressive metal fan that they buy this CD immedeatly. it is well orth the money.

Ok I've been listening to this cd non-stop so I feel like I can accurately write a review for it. As expected from BTBAM, they made another amazing album. To me it marks a turn in their careers. The reason I say this is because I feel like they are confident if that makes any sense. Being a band that's constantly blending genres, redefining them, and being a predominantly metal band on top of that, every step forward bands like this make are a step into the unknown. If Silent Circus was a taste or glimpse of what they could be, Alaska a premonition, and Colors the actualization of all that talent, then The Great Misdirect is the effort of a band that has found their sound (ironically enough for them it's a undefinable sound that they're defined by) and on top of that, know they're good at it. The impression as a long time fan put aside, this is why the cd is great. It's like Colors in the "flowing" sense, the re-use of certain riffs and lyrics (like in Mirrors and Obfuscation), you can put this cd on and play it from beginning to finish (still amazing because not even the greatest of bands normally do this, no less in 2 cds in a row!). Now the difference, the most noticeable thing to me is the "organic" feel I get to it. Whether it's the tone of the guitars or something else, there's a much more "natural" feel to this cd than Colors, the use of softer sections in the music is much more pronounced, they aren't just cleverly resolving death metal songs into some acoustic diddly, the songs NATURALLY go to that. It doesn't make me raise an eyebrow because of how the songs do this like they did in Colors but it does make me raise an eyebrow at the fact that they do it so seamlessly that I don't even get surprised by it. The use of piano is a little more pronounced as well which probably adds to the organic feel, I dare you to hear Fossil Genera's intro and not get all giddy and have a stupid smile plastered onto your face. Another thing worth noting is that the album is not as heavy as their previous efforts. Don't get me wrong, they are still a metal band, they still use growls, blast beats, and distorted guitar tones but it's not as concerned with being as dissonant and heavy as before. All this being said, the only reason this cd didn't get 5 stars is because I feel like at certain points in some of the songs they delve too far into the mellow acoustic stuff to the point that you lose your orientation when listening and you kinda forget that you're listening to them until the heaviness kicks in, sometimes I forgot I even had music playing as I was doing something and completely missed like 3 minutes of the middle of some song because it just didn't hold me. That being said, I'm really just nit-picking, the cd is amazing, get it if you like technical stuff, get it if you like groovy stuff, get it if you like totally original music, jeez just get it if you like music period!

I have been waiting for this release since I discovered "Colors" in the fall of 2007. I was not sure how this album would pan out but I must admit it is another masterpiece by Between the Buried and Me. If the musicianship of "Colors" mesmerized you, the energy of "The Silent Circus" enthralled you and the unpredictable mayhem of "Alaska" kept you coming back for more; your socks will be blown off upon the first listen of "The Great Misdirect".

Before listening to the "Colors" album I was not a fan of metal in any way, shape or form. If you consider yourself a fan of good music regardless of its label, pick up a copy of "The Great Misdirect" and prepare to be taken to another world.

I'm a BIG fan of BTBAM's Colors album. I do not own any of their earlier works. The Great Misdirect has some good sections, but it just isn't as good overall as Colors.

This review is broken into two pieces: the review of the actual album, which is first, then the review of the extra DVD features, which is down at the bottom.

It was written for my blog when the album first came out, so that's why the dates might be a bit off :).

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So, I got this package in the mail today. I didn't think it was anything important, but then I saw that it was from Victory Records and immediately, my heart started racing: It was the new Between the Buried and Me album THE GREAT MISDIRECT!

I immediately dropped everything and raced upstairs to my computer to pop it in. I already downloaded their pre-released "single" (I doubt it could seriously be called a single when it's 9+ minutes long) "Obfuscation" and had already listened to it 50+ times in the period of 1-2 weeks. Needless to say, I could dig it.

Before I go any further, let me first say that Between the Buried and Me's previous release, COLORS, is for me, probably the single greatest album I've ever heard. Dream Theater's SCENES FROM A MEMORY, plus Redemption's new SNOWFALL ON JUDGMENT DAY are up there, but when it comes to pure progressive and just flat out DIFFERENT metal (or flat out different music in general), BTBAM is leading the charge. Never before had I heard hardcore metal mixed with a little country and some groovy clean guitar solos IN A SINGLE SONG ("Ants of the Sky"), not to mention all of the other crazy sections from that album (crying babies and cat-like sounds from "Sun of Nothing"?). But I gotta admit, I love it. It's this unique kind of musical comedy where you gotta chuckle at how crazy and/or ballsy these guys are for doing whatever they want within their music (and not caring about what you think), yet still keeping it complex, brutal, and beautiful, all within the amazing period 60 minutes.

To qualify as one of my favorite bands, you gotta have the right personnel, first and foremost. BTBAM, The Dear Hunter, Redemption, Opeth, and Dream Theater are examples that all fit that bill. You also have to have your own sound that you either progress with or improve upon as more and more albums are released. I feel that all of the bands I listed do that exceptionally well.

As far as skill goes within the band, everyone is at the top of their game. The rhythm section, for me, especially stands out. Dan Briggs and Blake Richardson are absolute beasts with their respective instruments and each of them turn in a monster performance on this album. Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring are always good as well, with Paul quickly become one of the greatest guitarists of this generation. And finally, Tommy Rogers is turning into a premiere musician himself, in both clean and scream vocals (a la Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth), plus keyboards. On this album, Tommy really expands and perfects his keyboard skills, creating some of the more memorable sequences on the album, like the beginning of "Fossil Genera" and the classic hard rock section from "Disease, Injury, Madness".

Continuing on with the actual album review, BTBAM makes great strides in their march into musical greatness (my opinion of course) with their latest album THE GREAT MISDIRECT. The album zig-zags and winds its way into seemingly every corner of musical history, from country, western, classic rock, alternative rock, jazz, fusion, metal, and of course, experimental. This is PROGRESSIVE metal at its finest and I can pretty much guarantee you won't hear a more unique album this year.

As far as stand out songs... I can't really pick any. And not just because there are only six, but because each seems to go in a different direction. Mirrors is the more clean, appeal-to-the-masses type of song, Obfuscation is more traditional metal with some cool sections and breakdowns, Disease, Injury, Madness leans more towards the thrash, blast beat metal, Fossil Genera is more experimental, Desert of Song is the chill song (a la Viridian from COLORS), and Swim to the Moon is the epic combining all of the different elements from the previous songs and mashing them together in an 18-minute masterpiece! (Wow, was that a mouthful!)

That's not to say all songs stick to their respective description above. As usual, four of the six songs transition at least once from a softer, clean section to their more traditional brutal, face-melting sound (or vice versa) in a way that only BTBAM (and maybe Opeth) can pull off. As Mike Portnoy once described Opeth's WATERSHED, this album is BRUTIFUL, containing many beautiful moments and many bone-crushingly brutal moments.

Consider this album another huge step forward into musical territory not yet explored by the band becoming more and more known for their progressive nature, especially with their latest two albums, COLORS and now THE GREAT MISDIRECT.

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As for the DVD, it contains a great 45-minute or so documentary mostly showing the recording process for the album and watching the guys goof off while they pull off ridiculous riffs. You start to realize that these guys are actually pretty hick, especially when Dusty gets interviewed on a riding lawn mower and the more you hear Paul talk with his southern accent. Nonetheless, it's extremely entertaining and fascinating as a musician myself to watch these guys create absolutely phenomenal music. One part in particular is especially hilarious, when Paul watches Dan try and record the bass part for a section.

You get a little bit of the history of the band as well, which is interesting in itself. It's weird thinking of these guys as being musically revolutionary (which they are) because they're all so young. The oldest member is Waggoner, who's 30, and Blake Richardson is only 25! It's going to be really awesome to see these guys progress even further into unknown musical territory. Let's hope they stay together for many more years!

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In conclusion...

THE GREAT MISDIRECT is a masterpiece of epic proportions, with every member of the band contributing and improving in both skill and songwriting ability, creating a uniquely beautiful, angry, confusing, and most of all, entertaining, piece of musical art. This is a must-have album for any progressive listener.

to say the least, this was probably the most amazing album i have ever listened to. I didnt believe it was possible to have your mind blown by a cd, until now. I could not listend to the other albums i had purchased with it because none of them had the same intensity, fluidity, or technical prowess as this cd displays. afterwards i called my brother to tell him about it, and he told me he was having the same problem. ill try to sum up the pros and cons of this album for everyone:

pros-
Vocals are amazing. His death growls are tied with mikael akerfeldt's (opeth) for best, and his clean vocals are just as good.
Guitars once again create catchy riffs that are fun and interesting, as well as transition smoothly between passages and keep you wanting more.
i dont usually pay attention to drummers as long as they sound okay, so when i found myself following the drum beats, i was really suprised. his drum solo on "swim to the moon" was great, and his fills couldnt have been better.
None of the parts ever seem to be competing for attention, so its just as easy to get lost in the rhythm section as it is to bust out to the solos.
Everything is kept interestng. Even on the simplest/most laid back song (desert of song), they constantly change from the major to the minor of the same chord, and use more than just simple open chords. never a dull moment with these guys!

cons-
WAY too short. it was such an amazing album, and then like that it was over. made me wish they had at least 2-3 more songs (even with its 1hour play time)
can be hard to follow for those not used to their playing style (i started with alaska and proceeded to buy all their albums) and will probably overwhelm some people who arent used to 15+minute songs.

overall, a truly amazing album, one that has pretty much ruined all music for me as of this moment (i wasnt able to get into colors because i couldnt sit down and listen to it the whole way through at the time, but after this album, i think it will be easier for me). Id be willing to shoot somebody it they tried taking off with this. i just hope they make a live dvd/cd for this album, then all will be right in the world.