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Between The Buried And Me

BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME
‘The Parallax II: Future Sequence’

[Metal Blade Records]

The Prog Metal warriors, Between the Buried and Me return with a dominating new full length, ‘The Parallax II: Future Sequence‘, in which they truly came, saw and conquered, yet again.

The LP starts off with ‘Goodbye to Everything’, a subtle introduction, acoustic guitars, clean vocals with harmonies, a very peaceful start. This isn’t something they have often done before, but it has you wondering what else is to be expected. Soon enough, we’re back on track with ‘Astral Body‘ which has a more familiar shredy-prog metal feel about it; with soaring clean vocals over some amazing melodic guitar work, this is the definition of what Progressive Metal is. It’s intricately written, and performed by these virtuosos.

The Parallax II: Future Sequence‘, has a very ‘Astro Physics’ feel about it, with space aged synth patterns delicately placed in-between thunderous arpeggio riffs. The album is filled with tiny interludes where they drift off into jazz rhythms or an odd clean section, even strange retro computer game style sounds in the midst of growled vocals and pure shred action.

The album is varied in song styles, there are some shorter ones which remain instrumental and melodic, and there are the thunderous tracks such as ‘Silent Flight Parliament‘ and ‘Lay Your Ghosts to Rest‘.

Between the Buried and Me have returned with a great album and potentially one of the best of the year. It slightly different perspective with a somewhat concept feel about it. Not many stand out bands these days in Progressive Metal, but who needs others anyway when there is BTBAM, they more than fill the void. They do Prog Metal so well, there’s no need real to elaborate. Between The Buried And Me are just masters of their craft. All those years listening to bands like Dream Theater has rubbed off on them, with a development of spell bounding musicianship displayed through this album.

Words: Arif Noor

Categories
Live Reviews Music

Between The Buried And Me Live at Sub89, Reading


BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME
w/ Periphery, The Safety Fire

Sub89, Reading
01.10.12

First on tonight’s bill is the home-grown talent The Safety Fire. The London lads play to a fairly full room considering they go on straight after doors. It seems the ever increasing crowd appreciates The Safety Fire’s techy-brand of metal and although not too familiar with the material played before them, the audiences’ reaction to songs taken from ‘Grind The Ocean‘ is positive, a promising sign for a band who are clearly targeting this market. On a completely irrelevant and non musical note, it has to be mentioned that The Safety Fire display facial hair at its finest. Their set was topped off with a glorious array well kept moustaches.

So away from male-grooming and back to music for a second or two, and its now Periphery‘s turn to take to the stage. With much loved drummer Matt Halpern being forced to withdraw from the performance due to a shoulder injury, a massive burden is placed upon the shoulders of Mike Malyan (Monuments) who has to learn the challenging set in 24 hours and perform to a hungry crowd. Well, the boy did good, there were no notable errors and he played with style, stamina and impressive levels of skill. And as for the rest of Periphery, well they owned the stage, it goes without saying Misha Mansoor was effortlessly exceptional and Spencer Sotelo domineered as a front man.

Between The Buried And Me really deserve to be playing to a sold out show but unfortunately the room is now only around three quarters full. Words cannot describe Between The Buried And Me’s levels of creativity, their captivating set travels through an odyssey of technical music; a progressive journey that climaxes with blistering riffs and intense vocals. Combing old favourites such as ‘Disease, Injury, Madness‘ (taken from ‘The Great Misdirect’) along with newer numbers like ‘Telos‘, BTBAM hold the audience in the palms of their hands. The band perform a masterclass, with a level of musicianship second to none.

Words: Emma Wallace

Categories
Features Music

The Safety Fire interview

With a mental live show, stated as a ‘must see band’ by yours truly at Crossfire and tipped to be the next big thing by Metal Hammer, UK band The Safety Fire are hot property right now. After putting out an insanely strong debut in Grind The Ocean earlier this year we needed to grab a chat with the eccentric band. Backstage at Hevy festival journalist Emma Wallace caught up with hilarious front man Sean McWeeney, and banterous guitarist Derya Nagle who were suitably dressed in Hawaiian shirts! Here’s what went down…

How have your festival performances gone down this summer?

Sean: Well today we played Hevy, and considering we were on at 12:30 I was pretty pleased with the turn out. I thought people would still be dying in their tents, but it was quite busy.

Deyra: Yeah I mean its always hard when you are a smaller band or on early in the day but that performance went well. I heard it was a lot busier than for the bands at the same time yesterday. Pretty pleased!

Sean: But the problem with playing so early is that you finish early and get drunk early and you still have the whole day and night ahead of you to drink!

Deyra: Just to point out, we aren’t alcoholics. We don’t drink before we go on stage. We’re good boys like that. At Download we played at like half eight in the evening, but we didn’t drink before that, and there was plenty of hanging around before hand that could have been taken up by drinking! Download was cool actually, we played before Gallows and Cancer Bats. It was rammed. It was ace.

The_Safety_Fire_Interivew

The_Safety_Fire_Interivew

Sweet! Guys, I can’t really ignore it anymore, what’s with your attire today?! Hawaiian shirts aren’t that metal!

Deyra: Well we are at a festival so why not eh?! Hawaiian shirts are where it’s at. The sun’s out today, and I think you can thank us for that.

Sean: The shirts have a nice little story behind them. We originally bought them all in Florida when we were touring there.

Deyra: And someone told us they have a magical power. And earlier on today none other than Andrew W.K. gave us the nod of approval. You know one of those looks that are like ‘Yes Sir, you look mighty fine.’

Sean: Indeed, it was actually a point and a nod. You can’t get better than that. These shirts were actually bought at a Salvation Army charity store on a highway. Someone might have died wearing this shirt. They cost the equivalent of about £1. And they are beautiful shirts so you can’t miss a bargain like that. So essentially, what we are doing to metal is bringing the Floridian sun over to England. I think it might catch on you know, they are gorgeous and I’d love it if people turned up to shows in floral shirts, i’ts injecting a whole lot of colour into a goth club. All the hardcore kids are in tie dye, but I’m not sure, you need something more formal, I mean these shirts have buttons. They might make an appearance on the BTBAM tour!

They are beautiful indeed…Well you’ve bought us on quite nicely to the tour. How are you feeling about that? Excited?!

Deyra: Its going to be a lot of fun! We know the Periphery guys really well who are on the tour. Playing at Shepherds Bush Empire will be special. We’ve played all sorts of venues in London, right from the bottom to some of the best.

Sean: It’s great to play to a passionate crowd after years of playing to one man and his dog.

Deyra: And to be on tour with Between The Buried And Me will be something else. We feel that musically we are closely matched. They’re one of those bands where we think our style is very similar and I imagine their fans will be open minded and listen to what we do and enjoy it.

Are there any bands out there at the moment you think deserve a plug?

Deyra: Let’s go with all our old tour buddies Rise To Remain and Bleed From Within.

Sean: No not Bleed From Within! I’m starting a tongue-in-cheek hate campaign against them so plugging them doesn’t really work! They are from this area in the north of England called Scotland. You can barely understand them when they talk. They say ‘Hello we are Bleed From Within’, but it sounds more like ‘Bleed From Wuthwon’ or something bizarre like that.

Deyra: Sean isn’t actually a dick. We take the piss out of them and they do it to us. We tend to do it in interviews the most. I think this is about round three of TSF v BFW. Scott, the pretty front man, stole a pair of Sean’s sunglasses, he didn’t like that very much. So now, we have a bit of banter with the guys, a bit of friendly beef. Make sure they find out about this though, make sure you get me in there quoted as saying ‘Bleed From Within are from Northern England’.

Sean: But yes, they are a great band. We’re just better haha!

Catch The Safety Fire on tour with Periphery and Between The Buried And Me at the following shows:

OCTOBER

1st, Reading – Sub 89
2nd, Wolverhampton – Slade Rooms
3rd, Glasgow – The Garage
4th, Newcastle – O2 Academy 2
5th, Manchester – O2 Club Academy
6th, Leeds – Cockpit
7th, Bristol – O2 Academy
8th, Southampton – The Brook

NOVEMBER
2nd, London – Shepherds Bush Empire

Categories
Music Music News

The Safety Fire Post New Video


Crossfire favorites The Safety Fire have injected some fresh adrenalin into our veins with their high speed video for latest single DMB (FDP) that dropped this evening. The video, directed and edited by Jamie Carter, showcases the bands energetic live performances from their recent tour with metal titans Gojira and their critically acclaimed performance at this years Download festival.

TSF guitarist Derya Nagle explains a bit more about how the video was made and why they picked this track in particular:

‘DMB (FDP) is one of our favourite songs to play live and was an obvious choice for this video. We love touring, and wanted to give a wider audience a glimpse into what our live show is all about. We filmed over several UK dates, including our performance at Download and our recent run with Gojira. We were lucky enough to have our good friend Jamie Carter produce the video, whose eclectic credits include Rise To Remain, Conor Maynard, Funeral For A Friend and Professor Green to name a few. Other filming duties were handled by our friends and crew including our brü Adam Nolly Getgood, who recently joined Periphery. More importantly this video will help spread the message of #FDP. Jokes.’

Not ones to sit still for too long, The Safety Fire will be heading back out on the road this autumn as support for the legendary Between The Buried And Me and US djent/tech-metal heroes, Periphery. The dates are as follows:

OCTOBER
1st, Reading – Sub 89
2nd, Wolverhampton – Slade Rooms
3rd, Glasgow – The Garage
4th, Newcastle – O2 Academy 2
5th, Manchester – O2 Club Academy
6th, Leeds – Cockpit
7th, Bristol – O2 Academy
8th, Southampton – The Brook
NOVEMBER
2nd, London – Shepherds Bush Empire

Stay tuned for an interview with the guys from this year’s Hevy Festival!

The Safety Fire’s debut album ‘Grind The Ocean‘ is out now.

WORDS: EMMA WALLACE