I don’t really talk about them that much, but Between the Buried and Me used to be one of my favourite bands. I guess they kind of still are. Colors II ended up being my favourite album of 2021, which I think is a pretty atypical opinion, but I can’t say I’ve been particularly taken with anything else they’ve put out since 2012’s The Parallax II: Future Sequence (maybe sequels are the secret?). On this later point, I feel like myself and the wider listening public are more aligned though. Over the last decade or so, however, the once-unimpeachable progressive metal titans’ stock seems to have seriously plummeted, to the point that neither of their two sets at this year’s Arc Tan Gent festival were deemed worthy of headlining, and one only barely making it into the poster’s logo section. Couple that with the recent controversy surrounding former guitarist Dustie Waring, who was officially ousted from the band last year, following some serious sexual assault allegations, and all of this leaves both Between the Buried and Me and The Blue Nowhere with a lot to prove.
Unfortunately, The Blue Nowhere only goes to show that Between the Buried and Me’s current incarnation no longer live up to their lofty legacy. This is a directionless mess of a record that leans into the band’s worst and most excessive inclinations, without any of the compositional focus or magnificent moments that defined the first half of their career. Sure, their instrumentation is still extremely impressive, from a technical standpoint, but none of it seems to serve the songs or even cohere into an overall sonic concept. Perhaps its Muse-like cover should have been a warning: this is what happens when progressive metal goes severely off the rails.
Both Between the Buried and Me and progressive metal's worst tendencies are laid bare on opening track “Things We Tell Ourselves in the Dark.” I absolutely cannot stand this song, which layers poorly pronounced, Peter Gabriel-esque pop-prog melodies over Red Hot Chili Peppers-style funk wank. It’s a shockingly off-putting way to start an album and should have been binned entirely due to its abysmal self-indulgence, and because following track “God Terror” provides a much better way to start the record, with its driving, electronic-laden drum build up and attention-grabbing guitar riffs. This next song and third track “Absent Thereafter” are noticeably heavier and refreshingly direct, although I’m still left wondering why the latter has a bluegrass/swing break in the middle of it, or why it has a random horn part that cuts off a heavier prog section that sounds a lot like things they’ve done before on Colors (2009) and the Parallax records. “Progressive” used to mean experimenting with complex song structures and virtuoso musicianship, which Between the Buried and Me embodied. Now it just means suddenly bursting into a different genre for no reason, apparently.
Whatever momentum is built up by "God Terror" and "Absent Thereafter" is quickly done away with though by the baffling decision to follow them up with two short interlude tracks placed back to back. "Pause" starts with a minute of what sounds like fly noises, before becoming a spacey acoustic track that sounds like an intro track that could/should have been cut from one of Thomas Giles [Rogers]' underwhelming solo albums, and builds up to "Mirror Uncoil", which is fifty seconds of ooky spooky Danny Elfman-style clarinet, before Giles jumps in at the end yells "Mirador uncoil, La Mort" in the style of Napalm Death's "You Suffer" for some reason. This is followed by "Door #3", which is another instance where a cool riff is squandered upon forcibly wacky song structures, with much of its first half being backed by something that sounds like circus music, before the song suddenly stops to usher in an ill-fitting flamenco interlude.
"Psychomanteum" and "Slow Paranoia" are stronger offerings, although the former again feels overly reminiscent of Colors and other things the band have done better many times over at this point, while the latter is spoiled by some cringey crooner sections, and neither of them need to be twelve-minutes long. Perhaps the album's weakest offering though (besides "Mirador Uncoil") is its penultimate, title-track, which starts off sounding like a later-day Dream Theater ballad, but quickly ends up sounding like Coldplay, but with worse vocals than both. Final track "Beautifully Human" offers some hope for the future by sounding like a mix of "White Walls" and better Dream Theater, mixed in with some interesting vocal and lead-guitar melodies, but I'm too burnt out at this point for it to matter much.
The Blue Nowhere is an album without any musical through-line or coherent character other than how unfocused it is. Perhaps this is fitting, since the record also abandons Between the Buried and Me's more traditional narrative concepts in an attempt to inhabit the "chaotic" conceptual world of it's eponymous imaginary hotel, but that doesn't make it fun to listen to, and only suggests that it is in desperate need of some housekeeping. The instrumental wackiness they rely upon here worked way better on Automata (2018), where it felt genuinely fresh and surprising, whereas now it just feels forced. Too often I'm left imagining the band rolling their eyes and throwing the finger guns while smirking out "that just happened" like characters in an abandoned Joss Whedon feature.
On the other hand, those moments where they stick closer to the progressive metal conventions they've established elsewhere come across as uninspired without the contextual continuity offered by Colors II's sequel setting. and only end up feeling derivative of past glories. Perhaps this double-edged assessment is unfair, but we recently saw Dream Theater manage to recapture some of their classic quality by playing within the template they'd set for themselves while also still managing to introduce some new and distinctive elements into the mix. This might not be as ambitious as The Blue Nowhere but is far more effective, and certainly something I think the band could be capable of themselves in future—which is to say that I'm still holding out hope for Between the Buried and Me, even if there's none to be found here.