By Andrew Bansal
Tackling the seemingly insurmountable challenge of topping their two ‘Parallax’ releases that surfaced in 2011 and 2012, Raleigh, North Carolina progressive metal titans Between The Buried And Me took themselves to even higher altitudes with their seventh full-length album ‘Coma Ecliptic’, a concept-based, rock opera style 68-minute magnum opus of all things prog. Following the July 2015 Metal Blade Records release of the album, Between The Buried And Me began the touring cycle with headline run in the States, and are now ready to embark on yet another, with Enslaved, Intronaut and Native Construct as opening acts, for what promises to be the prog event of the year. On November 11th, I spoke to bassist Dan Briggs to talk about ‘Coma Ecliptic’, the ’70s prog influence, songwriting, the upcoming tour and more. Enjoy the conversation below.
After the ‘Parallax’ releases which were a big effort from the band in every sense, what was your mindset going into writing ‘Coma Ecliptic’?
It was the same as every time, really. You get sick of playing the songs that you’ve been playing for two, two-and-a-half years, and you’re just brimming with excitement and creative energy to explore new places and figure out what the next album is going to be. I would say we came into it with about 60 per cent of it put together before we even really got into the rehearsal space together. So, it was great, and we really had the album laid out from day one. We knew the chunks that we had to work on, what we had to write, before we even had a story or anything. It was really fun. We’re not going to play the whole album until probably next fall, so to get to the point where we’re tired of what we’ve already done with this one, we haven’t even dove into this album yet.
You said that most of it was already written before you got together as a band. How was that done? Just people working individually in their own spaces?
Yeah, we always write at home. We’re not a band that goes in a pratice space and just jams and starts piecing together these 15-minute long songs or whatever (laughs). It’s all very meticulously written at home, and drafts and scraps are done before any member gets to hear even a single lick. I put my compositions through a pretty intense filter process before I feel like I can send it off to anyone. When I do send it off I like to make sure that there’s sheet music attached to it as well as demo. That’s just how I write, though. I like writing and building things from the ground up. So, when we get together it’s really just about learning the stuff with Blake, and working out any changes, any additions, demoing the stuff together and just moving one song at a time. It’s great.
Even though ‘Parallax’ constituted two releases over two years and took a lot out of the band, but ‘Coma Ecliptic’ seems like an even bigger one because it has that rock opera kind of style of it and it’s 70 minutes long. Did it feel like that to you guys when you were working on it?
We were just having fun when we were writing. There weren’t any real head-scratchers or any moments where we were wondering what we were going to do next. We were writing with an excess of ideas because we definitely felt that we were taking some steps forward with our sound and it was really exciting to anyone. It happened very easily and came together really quickly. We never considered the stuff that we’ve done in the past. I think we practice what we preach, that we’re a progressive music band. To us that means not repeating yourself, not staying very comfy and trying to evolve.
Right, the word progressive is not just to do with the transitions within a song, but it’s also a progression of your own musicality from album to album.
Yeah, the word gets tossed around more now than it probably ever has in the history of music. and it’s something that is often misused or used to describe a group of bands that sound exactly like each other. The media always wants to figure out how to exactly pinpoint some group. But it’s funny to us because I consider a band like Radiohead as a good example of a progressive band, even though they don’t sound like any of the prog rock bands from the ’70s, except for may be some Krautrock stuff like Can, but they’re a band that’s constantly evolving and changing, and that’s a huge inspiration for sure.
Exactly, but the challenge for a band like yours, with the kind of technically oriented sound that you’re going for, is to be accessible. I think ‘Coma Ecliptic’ is more accessible in that sense. Do you feel that as well?
Yeah, it’s funny because you caught me while I’m preparing to leave for this tour which starts exactly a week from today, so we’re going back and learning songs off of ‘Colors’ and ‘The Great Misdirect’, and we’re even going back to the ‘Alaska’ album a little bit on this tour to pay homage to its ten-year anniversary. The songs are just so dense, it’s crazy. I can’t quite decide which one of them is the bigger culprit, whether it’s ‘Colors’ or ‘The Great Misdirect’, but we learn a song that we haven’t played in a while, over a year or so, and just really dig in, and see that the theme and mood drastically changes within the song. I think that’s kind of what defined the band for a while, but I don’t think that’s what we felt like what we were doing when we were writing. May be we internalized it a little differently, but I would say our songs on this new album have become more, I would say succinct, not necessarily shorter. I think we did a better job of finding what’s the core of this song with the meat of it, and being able to make that more of the focus and build off of it. So, at the core of the whole ‘Coma’ record, you have these different sounds and ideas that may be would have happened in a five-minute span on ‘The Great Misdirect’ or ‘Colors’ (laughs). All those elements are there, and the quirky elements are there too. For a song like ‘The Ectopic Stroll’, we took that quirky element and decided that it was going to be a whole song, just this zany, bonkers kind of circusy feel to it, and we were just going to ride with it and see what happens. I think that’s cool, and the biggest thing I’m taking away from the album. If that makes it more accessible or not, to be we’re just getting better at songwriting.
This kind of concept/opera based style is very old-school prog in that sense. Do you think the band even subconsciously draws influence from ’70s prog?
I would say it’s 70-80 per cent of my world. What an incredible decade of music and exploration. It had all the highs and lows. There’s the totally genius music that sounds like stuff you’ve never heard before, and then there’s the excess and stuff that may be got a little too self-involved and people got a little too ridiculous. But it was just so awesome to see, and those bands were huge at the time! If you look at someone like Zappa or Yes, the size of places that they were playing, it was absolutely insane. So, we definitely pull a lot from that era. I’d say it’s more in the makeup though, and it’s not like we’re setting out to be King Crimson circa 1974 on this song or in this section. It’s just inherent things that are part of our makeup and our DNA.
You mentioned something earlier about playing the entire ‘Coma Ecliptic’ album live. So, you plan on doing it next fall?
Yeah, it’s probably going to happen about a year from now, next fall. We’ve got plans through the summer, so we’ll land back in America and be able to do the whole record around next fall. That’s like the pinnacle of the whole thing, from the first note you start writing, all the time that you spend in the rehearsal room, in the studio and then touring on the album, it all kind of leads up to being able to play the full thing. So, we’re excited to get to that point.
Talking of this tour that you have coming up, it’s starting very soon, you’re headlining and you have Enslaved, Intronaut and Native Construct with you. It’s a pretty exciting lineup that has ‘tour of the year’ potential in my opinion, and I go to all the shows, so that’s saying a lot. How excited are you about it?
As a fan, very excited! I think it shows a pretty wide spectrum of what’s happening in progressive metal right now. Enslaved are obviously a band that’s been around for a really long time, and a band who’s seen their sound go through some sort of evolution and progression over the years which is really cool. Intronaut are a band that we’ve taken out on tour before and had a great time with, and really enjoy live, and they’ve got new music. And then Native Construct are a really new band that people are kind of just checking out and getting into. I’m pretty positive that it’s their first full US tour and they’re a band that plays more in the theatrical kind of side of the progressive metal thing. So, from that, all the way up to how dark Enslaved is and then to us, I feel like it’s a perfect bridge.
Right, and I think it’s the headliner’s responsibility too to put together a good show overall, and even if the band is not directly involved in picking the support acts, which happens sometimes as it’s done by booking agencies or management, but people that come to the shows always blame or credit the headliner for picking support bands, depending on whether they dislike or like them.
Oh yeah, and I’ll tell you 100 per cent that it’s us putting the tours together. It’s important that the bands we play with and the night of music that people are hearing is definitive of us. I think we’re established enough in America to where we feel like we have a certain duty to take out bands that we ourselves are really into, whether it’s a young band like Native Construct, or like over a year or some ago when we took Deafheaven out on the road. Wherever it fits ito the spectrum of music that we’re into, it’s something that we feel is important for us to do. And it’s exciting for us too. I mean, how many times have we toured America? Like, 507,000 times (laughs). So, it’s fun to be like, ‘Oh, this time we get to take these guys out, and I’m so excited to see this band.’ It’s cool when that happens.
Between The Buried And Me links: faceboook | twitter | instagram
Between The Buried And Me tour dates with Enslaved, Intronaut, Native Construct:
11/18 – Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
11/19 – Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
11/20 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
11/21 – Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
11/23 – Minneapolis, MN @ Skyway Theater
11/24 – Lincoln, NE @ Bourbon Theater
11/25 – Denver, CO @ The Summit Music Hall
11/27 – Reno, NV @ Knitting Factory
11/28 – San Francisco, CA @ The Regency Ballroom
11/29 – Los Angeles, CA @ Mayan Theatre
12/01 – Scottsdale, AZ @ Livewire
12/02 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater
12/03 – El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls
12/04 – Lubbock, TX @ Lonestar Pavilion
12/05 – San Antonio, TX @ The Aztec Theatre
12/06 – Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
12/08 – Atlanta, GA @ Center Stage
12/10 – Toronto, ON @ The Danforth Music Hall
12/11 – Ottawa, ON @ Bronson Centre
12/12 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues
12/13 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre Of Living Arts
12/15 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
12/16 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
12/17 – Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore
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