Digging Up The Heart Of A Song

North Carolina prog-metallers Between The Buried & Me initially announced latest concept suite Coma Ecliptic via a succinct ("It has begun! #rockopera") tweet. Less than a year since its release, bassist Dan Briggs good-naturedly, although in this instance unnecessarily, pre-empts potential queries about its complex lyrical narrative.

"It's one of the most tired things to answer, just because… We've answered it 500 times. That's our fault for writing the album I guess. It's one of those things where at a certain point you just want to let the music speak for itself," he laughs of oft-gruelling press duties. "Talking about this elaborate story that you didn't actually write; our singer (California-based Tommy Rogers) wrote it. If you want to talk about the music, I'll dissect songs."

"I think an album's path is sometimes difficult to find amid just a tonne of riffs and a lot of excitement, creative excitement, where the song was, where the heart of the song was."

Said LP is another appropriately dense exercise, juxtaposing Queen-esque chord progressions with vein-popping growls. "With stuff I was bringing in… I put it through such a rigorous developmental stage before I even want to share it with anyone," Briggs explains. "It goes through a lot. A song like Memory Palace, I sat on for probably a year to like six months before I even showed it to the guys. I think probably when I started writing it was 14 or 15 minutes long, and the final version is maybe ten minutes," he chuckles.

"When we were working through the arrangement it was like, 'wow, this is a long one'. I was, 'you guys don't even realise how much I cut out of this song'," he laughs. "But that's so good, and it's one of those things that you just get better about — seeing the arrangement, seeing the song and what's important in the song. We have so many guys that are composers writing music, that I think an album's path is sometimes difficult to find amid just a tonne of riffs and a lot of excitement, creative excitement, where the song was, where the heart of the song was. This album is kind of a study in finding that spot, and really writing some meaningful arrangements around what's the core of that song."

The quintet have also recently eschewed playing much early material live, instead focusing largely on recent output. The bassist notes that fare created circa 2001-2002 represents three-fifths another line-up, and musically is far removed. "There's some natural things that tie it together throughout the years, but comparing a song from the first album with Coma… it's like a totally different band. The problem is, honestly, a lot of our fans came on board with (2007's) Colors, or the records thereafter. So you'll throw in an old song, 'oh, this is great, this is gonna be something where people won't believe we've gone back that far'. But to a lot of people, it's either, 'we don't know that song', or 'that's an old one, whatever'."

However, Briggs reveals the Australian jaunt will incorporate cuts from 2005's Alaska. "I think that's what's important, if you can find a way to do something from the album, introduce that spirit of the album, but in a way that feels relevant to the band that you are now. We've found a neat way to do that with that album."