Between the Buried and Me

Formed in 2000 in Raleigh, North Carolina, Between the Buried and Me grew out of the local metalcore scene—notably linked to Prayer for Cleansing—around singer/keyboardist Tommy Giles Rogers Jr. and guitarist Paul Waggoner, later joined by Dustie Waring, Dan Briggs and Blake Richardson. Straddling progressive metal, technical death metal and a metalcore legacy, Between the Buried and Me developed a language combining blast beats, melodic passages, abrupt time-signature changes and more atmospheric stretches, often influenced by 1970s progressive rock. After a self-titled debut in 2002 and The Silent Circus in 2003, the band broadened its palette with Alaska (2005) and especially Colors (2007), noted for long tracks with a continuous structure. The conceptual side became more pronounced with The Great Misdirect (2009), the diptych The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues (2011) / The Parallax II: Future Sequence (2012) and Coma Ecliptic (2015). With Automata I and II in 2018 and Colors II in 2021, Between the Buried and Me continued a fragmented, narrative approach, alternating international metal and prog tours with studio work at the intersection of extreme metal and progressive music.