No Reservations

After 10 wildly eclectic albums, Between The Buried And Me are changing tact. In The Blue Nowhere, the fictional hotel in which their latest concept album lives, the best and worst of humanity can be found. A gradient of genres conveys its chaos and calm, making for their brightest and boldest record to date. Prog checks in to find out more.

- Phil Weller

Variety, as the saying goes, is the spice of life, and it's fuelled Between The Buried And Me's ever-changing, ever-weird, and perpetually progressive sound for 25 years. Sure, the North Carolina group started life with death metal coursing through their veins, but even then a love for strange and expansive music added different shades to their palette. With each release, the balance between the two has shifted. On their 11th album, The Blue Nowhere, vocalist Tommy Rogers has redefined his approach to concept albums and each musician plays off his counterpart’s polarities with aplomb.

“We've always had juxtaposition from member to member,” explains bassist Dan Briggs. “Whether that’s writing melodic prog and having Tommy scream over it like we did back in the day, or me bopping over a heavy part like I’m in Tears For Fears.”

“I think a lot of people will write a riff, and they'll have an idea of how the song needs to be for every other instrument. We know that each member will do what feels right in their lane, and it brings new life to the music,” Rogers agrees.

“Listening to our music, you sometimes don't know what's coming next; it's like that when we're writing. There are so many songs that when I sit down to work on vocals, I'm like, ‘How, the fuck am I gonna write vocals to this?’”

Named after the fictional hotel in which it's set, The Blue Nowhere doesn't offer a traditional narrative arc but is still very much conceptual, and the four walls of the hotel double as a magnifying glass for Rogers' explorations of “the things that define human existence”.

“I've had this obsession of wanting to write about a hotel over the years,” says the vocalist. “I remember being in Japan one time, I had jet lag and it was the middle of the night. I was sitting in this hotel room looking out the window, and I was hyper-aware of everything around me, but I felt like a ghost, like I wasn't part of anything. It was so weird.