Photo by Nick Budosh.
Audiences have never been larger or more receptive to the variety and power of progressive death metal and if you had to name the bands that were responsible for that, Meshuggah and Between the Buried and Me would have to be close to the top of that list. Prog metal fans are getting a double dose of those bands with the current tour that has just kicked off in California. Great New Metal’s Brian Shields sat down with BTBAM lead guitarist and co-founder Paul Waggoner after the second show on the tour in San Francisco to talk about the band’s past, its present, and its future.
As I sit with Paul Waggoner post-show in BTBAM’s cavernous green room downstairs at San Francisco’s Regency Center after enjoying some vegan cinnamon rolls, I note that the performance the band just finished is more diverse that their recent headlining tour playing Parallax II: The Future Sequence from beginning to end.
“Yeah, nothing pre-Colors,” Paul nods his head. “We’re doing a couple of songs off of Colors, I guess one off of Great Misdirect, and a couple of new ones as well. 2007-era BTBAM is the oldest we go but we’re trying to mix it up.
No “Naked by the Computer”, I kid him.
“You will probably never hear anything off of the self-titled, unless something weird happens, you’ll probably never hear that old stuff (live).”
Some of us love that old stuff, I insist.
“Yeah it has a special place in my heart as well but the reality is that most of our fans came on board with Colors or maybe Alaska so we have to cater to that, unfortunately. We would like to play some old stuff but the fact of the matter is that most people have never heard it, don’t care, and don’t know what it is.”
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