Review: BTBAM - The Anatomy Of
BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME: THE ANATOMY OF...
Genre: Compilation
Year released: 2006
Label: Victory Records
Official website: http://www.betweentheburiedandme.com
Tracks:
(1) Blackened (Original Artiste: Metallica) [6:40]
(2) Kickstart My Heart (Original Artiste: Mötley Crüe) [4:55]
(3) The Day I Tried To Live (Original Artiste: Soundgarden) [5:29]
(4) Bicycle Race (Original Artiste: Queen) [3:10]
(5) Three Of A Perfect Pair (Original Artiste: King Crimson) [4:11]
(6) Us And Them (Original Artiste: Pink Floyd) [7:53]
(7) Geek U.S.A. (Original Artiste: The Smashing Pumpkins) [5:25]
(8) Forced March (Original Artiste: Earth Crisis) [3:52]
(9) Territory (Original Artiste: Sepultura) [4:51]
(10) Change (Original Artiste: Blind Melon) [4:07]
(11) Malpractice (Original Artiste: Faith No More) [4:02]
(12) Little 15 (Original Artiste: Depeche Mode) [4:32]
(13) Cemetary Gates (Original Artiste: Pantera) [7:06]
(14) Colorblind (Original Artiste: Counting Crows) [3:48]
BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME (BTBAM for short) is a metal quintet that burst out of North Carolina, USA, and into the underground metal music scene in early 2001. Comprising of Tommy Rogers (Vocals/Keyboard), Paul Waggoner (Guitar), Dan Briggs (Bass guitar), Dust Waring (Guitar), and Blake Richardson (Drums), BTBAM is currently one of the hottest bands on the American non-mainstream music scene.
Originally formed in 2000 by vocalist Tommy Rogers and guitarist Paul Waggoner, the duo had an agreement to “craft a style of hard rock that would defy categorisation.” Indeed, the end result was a band of such complicated and intense musicianship that their genre largely defies categorisation to date due to their fluctuating style. However, some enthusiastic metalheads have managed to categorise BTBAM as a cross between the Progressive Metal and Mathcore genres. Mathcore , is a genre of music that makes use of polyrhythm (the sounding of two or more independent rhythms at the same time) and awkward time signatures. As much as this sounds like a disastrous symphony of noise in the making, it is really not worthy of such abhorrent description. Unrefined as it may sound, Mathcore music generally require a high level of technical musicianship, and BTBAM is getting increasingly famous because of that. Praised as the most creative rock force of the 21st century by some, they are definitely going to go down in underground music history as a groundbreaking band of their generation.
“The Anatomy Of...” is BTBAM's 4th studio album, but interestingly, this album does not contain a single song by them. Instead of playing their own brand of hardcore progressive metal music on this record, the band has decided to pay tribute to 14 bands that have influenced them over the past four decades by covering some of their most memorable classics. This release had received overwhelming response back in 2006, and this helped catalyst their rapid rise to fame by exposing them to an even wider audience.
From paramount metal giant Metallica to glam metal band Mötley Crüe, rock icons Queen and Pink Floyd to grunge icons such as The Smashing Pumpkins, BTBAM has found themselves a fabulous excuse to showcase their diversity, versatility and volatility on this album.
The album kicks off with one off Metallica's classic songs, “Blackened”, which is a yearning, dissonant piece of metal music filled to the brim with lots of dark energy. It perfectly illustrates BTBAM's taste for dissonant, brutal, and yet melodic guitar riffs, and it also sums up BTBAM's own general style technique wise; speedy guitar passages, a punishing yet melodic guitar solo, harsh vocals, and a fairly lengthy song time (6:40 minutes). The next iconic song, “Kickstart My Heart” which was originally by Mötley Crüe, displays BTBAM's technical mastery of their instruments. This song is famous for beginning with an 11-second-long guitar introduction that sounds similar to a car shifting gears, and the effect is created by dropping 3 strings consecutively while moving your fingers up and down the frets slowly, with the other hand strumming one stroke for each note. A tremolo is also needed to sustain the effect, and combining this with the above-mentioned three other technical aspects simultaneously certainly is no easy feat. And yet on this cover of the 1989 song, BTBAM executes it smoothly with no hiccups or discernible difference from the original's.
Other notable tracks on this album are “Bicycle Race”, “Us And Them”, and “Little 15”, by Queen, Pink Floyd, and Depeche Mode respectively. For people of our generation, most of us may never have heard of these “oldies” before. These 3 songs are already roughly 20 years old or so this year, but regardless so, their attractiveness has an almost magnetic quality to it. Their tunes just hook onto you relentlessly and refuse to get out of your head after just a few listens.
B T B A M - “Praised as the most creative rock force of the 21st century by some, they are definitely going to go down in underground music history as a groundbreaking band of their generation.”
“Bicycle Race” is a catchy, lyrically nonsensical song filled with vibrant Pop and Rock elements, and it even has a “bicycle bell solo” in it (Yes, anything is possible in 20th - 21st century music). “Us And Them” is a quiet, emotional song originally from influential rock group Pink Floyd's 1973 album, “The Dark Side Of The Moon”. That album was famed for staying on the Billboard charts for almost 29 years, and it represented Pink Floyd at their very best too. For a mostly hardcore metal group like BTBAM to be capable of accurately replicating the emotions conveyed in the original 1973 masterpiece, it is almost as if they are trying to rub it at face value the extent of their versatility. BTBAM just never fail to surprise their fans. “Little 15” on the other hand, is a sinister and somewhat moody song filled with catchy dark vocals and light but haunting use of instrumentals. In fact, I have heard the original version by Depeche Mode, but I personally found BTBAM's cover version of it to be more appealing. The nuances they so ingeniously incorporated into the song seem minor (like changing the originally operatic-sounding vocal part to a toned down, “modern rock band” style variation), but they just manage to change the song's essence, sparing only the technicality of the song which remains true to the original. For such an underground metal band to be able to interpret such a disturbing song in such a way that they actually made it sound eerier and more haunting than the original, they deserve as much praise as any other respectable band of the bygone Golden Age of Pioneering bands (think the Beatles, Metallica, the Scorpions etc).
All tracks on this album are equally fantastic, and I shall leave it to you music fans to scrutinise the rest of the album thoroughly with your ears and explore what music was to BTBAM through their own eyes. Along the way though, you might perhaps even start to take a liking to “oldies”.
All in all, this album is definitely a must-buy. It has a diversified array of classics from famous bands of different genres over the past 30 years being covered by an uprising metal group, and this unconventional aspect itself already makes it a unique album. Not leaning to any particular genre, this album would naturally appeal to most, if not all fans of the Rock and Metal genres.
Never has the 21st century seen such a young band being capable of covering famed classics whilst maintaining or even surpassing the quality withheld by the legendary originals.
Verdict: 5.0 / 5.0
Written By: Aloysius Boh