Last Tuesday: Between the Buried and Me - Melting City

     Whenever I'm looking for something technically proficient for a Tuesday post, I've got a couple of go-to sources that never let me down. One such well I visit frequently is the catalogue of Virginia's Arsis, but this time around I'm going south a state for a cut from North Carolina's Between the Buried and Me.

     Dazzling technicality is all over Between the Buried and Me's catalogue, but for last Tuesday I'm going with the epic "Melting City" from 2012's The Parallax II: Future Sequence. This one starts off with proggy fury, and even though things mellow out and get a little jazzier for a couple of stretches over the course of the ten-minute running time of "Melting City", there's never a lull in the top-notch musicianship. It's a bit of a time investment, but get to the end and I think you'll find it was all worth it. Go on. Click the link and find out if I'm right. I'll wait.

Between the Buried and Me - Extremophile Elite

     Fans of Between the Buried and Me will already know that the band's live DVD/BluRay Future Sequence: Live at Fidelitorium comes out next week, but the uninitiated might be wondering why they should be concerned with this fact.

     The logic goes thusly: Between the Buried and Me play an intricate, technical brand of prog death on any given day of the week, but things are ramped up a couple of notches when the band tackles a nice hefty story as they have on their last couple of records. Things are further elevated when you hear slices of these complex narratives performed live, but the vogue thing now for bands to do (BTBAM included) is performing albums in their entirety on tour.

     Live at Fidelitorium takes this magic and shifts it into a studio setting, performing the entirety of The Parallax II: Future Sequence in one go, with a bunch of guest musicians on various orchestral-type instruments thrown in for good measure. I was sold on the idea right there, but the band has put out a video of one of the songs from the DVD and it should be plenty strong enough to sway any doubters.

     Your song tonight is "Extremophile Elite", originally from Future Sequence but here taken from Live at Fidelitorium. Bask in the apparent ease with which the guys tear through this one, and then go get yourself a copy of the DVD.

Song of the Day: Between the Buried and Me - Lay Your Ghosts to Rest

     Just because today's Song of the Day post is a quickie doesn't mean today's song itself is. Strap yourself in people.

Song of the Day: Between the Buried and Me - Astral Body

     A couple of days ago I told you about a few upcoming records that I'm excited about, partly in an effort to get you excited about them too. In a further effort to stoke your anticipatory fires, between now and Super Tuesday, October 9th, I'm going to be sprinkling some new stuff off said upcoming albums into the Song of the Day mix. The stars have aligned (pun intended) and today is such a joyous day!

Super Tuesday

     I used to follow American politics somewhat closely, back during the... ahem...tumultuous term of Bush II. As a Canadian, it's a little hard not to. We're so closely commercially and culturally linked, and on top of that our own politics are so much...drier than those of our neighbours to the south. Don't get me wrong, as a voter I like the fact that the Right and the Left in Canada are both pretty Centrist positions. But as a spectator, I can't deny the appeal of a little political drama, things like mudslinging and the like. I don't really follow any sports closely, so stuff like that can be fun to see when they're not my politicians. Hence, I used to follow American politics. I haven't payed as much attention to this election as I did the last couple, but I still maintain more than a passing interest in Obama vs. Romney.

Song of the Day: Between the Buried and Me - Telos

     Once again, today's song picked itself. If you're a metal fan, you probably already know by now that death-tech-prog-everything  gurus Between the Buried and Me have finished working on their new album, The Parallax II: Future Sequence, a conceptual sequel to last year's The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP. Future Sequence is due out on October 9th, and I'm stoked, but I don't have to wait that long to hear some new stuff, and neither do you.

     The song of the day for today is "Telos" by Between the Buried and Me, and it's the first song released off of Future Sequence (though at more than nine minutes long I don't know if it can be considered the first "single"). It's epic, it's all over the place, and it's exactly the calibre of awesomeness you'd expect from Between the Buried and Me. Have a listen and mark your calendars.