By Andrew Bansal
Nov. 26th 2011, House Of Blues, Hollywood CA: On the back of their latest release, the spectacular 30-minute EP titled “The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues”, Between The Buried And Me toured across North America last May, and played the EP in its entirety. Now, they are back on another North American run called the Saints And Sinners tour, with a completely different set of songs. I was eager to see what they were going to play for the fans this time, and what they still retained from the last tour. Besides changing up their own show, they also brought with them a varied support package featuring Animals As Leaders and Tesseract. Even though I was still not completely over the mind-blowing show put on by Cynic, 3 and Scale The Summit three nights ago, I was hugely excited by the prospect of the Saints And Sinners touring line-up, and was ready to see how this one was going to turn out.
British djent/progressive metal band Tesseract opened up the show at exactly 8 o clock. They recently underwent a change in vocalist, with Elliot Coleman replacing Daniel Tompkins, and judging from the atmosphere among the fans, I could tell that the focus was on the singer more than anything else, and he was under heavy scrutiny. Music-wise, they did a great job. They sounded tight, and were excellent in presenting the material from their debut full-length “One”. They played the 27-minute piece called “Concealing Fate”, but it was interesting how they switched up the six parts around in the set and didn’t play it in order. Besides that they played “Hollow” and “April”. The crowd was getting pretty actively involved in the set, and circle pits were breaking open at regular intervals. But I have to say, the new singer isn’t quite “there” yet. He wasn’t putting enough depth into the clean vocals. His stage presence was great though, and he seemed to be enjoying himself up there. I’m sure he’ll get better with his voice as he plays more shows with the band. Nonetheless, it was a pretty solid set by Tesseract, and they have the promise to become one of the luminaries of the djent movement in the near future.
Setlist:
1. Hollow
2. Deception
3. The Impossible
4. Perfection
5. Epiphany
6. Origin
7. April
8. Acceptance
Washington DC’s instrumental prog-metal masters Animals As Leaders hit the stage next at 9 o clock, with the opening track from their latest album “Weightless”. At first sighting, the visuals being projected on the screens behind guitarists Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes looked amazing, and they had clearly worked on that aspect since the last time I saw them. But for some reason, Javier kept stepping in the line of projection and his shadow was visible on the screen behind him. That wasn’t the case with Tosin. May be Javier wasn’t aware of the angle of projection. I’m pointing that out because that was the only flaw in their performance. They sounded absolutely perfect, almost superhuman on their instruments. I felt their 9-song set was a perfect mix of songs from the two albums, with 6 songs from the first album, and 3 from Weightless. Fans, myself included, lost their minds when the old songs were played. Some of them started crowd surfing, which was great to see, but then a couple of them started hardcore dancing in the pit, which I was very miffed by, to be honest. When musicians like Tosin Abasi are up on that stage, why you would waste time doing anything other than watching him, is beyond me. But hey, to each their own. “Thoroughly At Home” and “CAFO” were the highlights of the set for me, even though all 6 of the old songs sounded simply fantastic. Honestly, the new songs didn’t blow me away, but they weren’t bad by any means. I think with time they’ll grow on me, and I feel my fellow AAL fans would agree with that. Overall, it was a treat to watch Tosin and co. again, and they proved that theirs is one band that never disappoints.
Setlist:
1. An Infinite Regression
2. Tempting Time
3. Song Of Solomon
4. Point To Point
5. Isolated Incidents
6. Thoroughly At Home
7. Wave Of Babies
8. Cylindrical Sea
9. CAFO
After a very short wait, Between The Buried And Me kicked off their set with “Mirrors”. That was an amazing start in itself, and things only kept getting better from that point on. With each song, they went from strength to strength, and their mind-boggling musicianship left all of us in awe and disbelief. They played their instruments with scorching precision, while vocalist Tommy Rogers was great as always, laying his voice on top of it all. The way he changed from deep growls to the most melodic, clean vocals you’d ever hear, all within a space of a mere seconds simply left the audience amazed. Even though all five members up there were completely accurate in performing their parts, they had plenty in terms of stage presence and soul, and never at any point did they seem like robots. The old material was in abundance, and the fans were loving every moment of it. If you’re not familiar with the band, looking at the set list on paper you would think that a 9-song, 80-minute set would be a drag because of the average length of each song, but there’s musically so much going on in any Between The Buried And Me song that it’s out of the question. Getting bored is not an option, at all, even when you hear the songs they play every time. “White Walls” is a classic example. That song never ceases to amaze me whenever they play it, and last night was no different. But surprisingly, that song was not the single biggest highlight of the set. That accolade goes to the medley they did a little earlier in the set. It consisted of choice parts from 7 of their songs, 7 songs that the fans have been asking them to play. That medley was beyond incredible, and it was perfectly done. They mixed in enough of each song, while it was done in such a way that it wasn’t too difficult for fans to keep up with it. I go to hundreds of shows every year, and I look for things like this, things that truly stand out and make a live performance totally unique. This medley was one of them. It was quite unlike anything I had ever seen before.
“White Walls” ended their main set, and they came back out with “Mordecai” as the encore item. They thanked the crowd for turning up in huge numbers and said their final goodbyes. As I said before, performance-wise they were flawless. Guitarists Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring proved themselves as masterful live musicians all over again, Paul in particular. That guy makes it hard for people like me to review the show, because it’s impossible not to look at his fingers to try to fathom what he’s doing when he’s playing his guitar. Tommy Rogers was equally great, and this was the single greatest vocalist performance I’ve seen from an extreme metal band this year. To merely do growls is one thing, and a lot of vocalists do that. But to combine it with clean vocals is a whole another beast, and with last night’s show, Rogers absolutely set the benchmark in that regard. Bassist Dan Briggs was not only excellent on bass, but was also the star of the show in terms of stage presence. Not to be left out, drummer Blake Richardson showed what he’s capable of during his solo, which served as an interlude to “Specular Reflection”, and his drumming was perfect throughout the set.
All in all, I think I speak for everyone by saying that Between The Buried And Me’s performance last night made my head explode. If you want to go through a similar experience, there are still plenty of dates left on this tour, so check out the tour dates on the band’s website/facebook, and if you live in one of those towns, I highly recommend you to go to this show.
Rating: 9/10 (BTBAM’s performance is definitely a 10/10, but my combined rating for all three bands is a 9)
Related: Between The Buried And Me interview | Tesseract pictures | Animals As Leaders pictures | Between The Buried And Me pictures
Setlist:
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Mirrors
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Obfuscation
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(B) The Decade Of Statues
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Disease, Injury, Madness
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Specular Reflection (with drum solo)
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Alaska / All Bodies / Arsonist / Shevanel Cut A Flip / Aspirations / Fire For a Dry Mouth / Lost Perfection: Anablephobia
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Viridian
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White Walls
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Mordecai
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