Between the Buried and Me makes for a challenging listen — and fans will tell you that's exactly what draws them to the band's lengthy compositions and heavy, intense sound.
The cult favorite group, which plays Vibes Event Center on Thursday, July 20, assembles a mix of metal from prog to extreme, then plucks liberally from disparate sounds ranging from folk to surf rock. Its epic pieces fit together like jigsaw puzzles.
The members of North Carolina-based BTBAM, as the fans call the band, know full well that its albums take a number of listens to absorb.
Maybe that's part of the reason that periodic tours during which the act performs past LPs in full are such a treat: the audience has had time to truly absorb them — much more so than when the release was new. For the current tour, the band is performing The Parallax II: Future Sequence, a groundbreaking 70-minute album released in 2012.
For the uninitiated, an obvious point of comparison for BTBAM would be to call it an American Opeth. The heavy riffs, the multi-part compositions, the recurring motifs and ferocious vocals are marked similarities. But beneath the surface, BTBAM are the opposite. Opeth's compositions drift by based on intricate segues designed to lull or seduce, while BTBAM revels in ripping the carpet out from under listeners.
Though BTBAM debuted in 2000, its breakthrough didn't occur until 2007, with the release of the concept album Colors. That record saw the introduction of an architecture that's remained intact since. The band's LPs play like full pieces with recurring melodies and themes, pieced together into labyrinthine song structures.
At the center of the carefully controlled chaos is vocalist Tommy Rogers, a man with distinctive clean and harsh vocal sounds — a tough one-two punch to execute. His turns on keyboards add a unique element, and many of the band's albums open with him singing a gorgeous melody over solo piano.
After that, it gets heavy and overwhelming. Obviously.
The Current talked to Rogers about the challenges of touring post-COVID and as a cult band. We also caught up on the difficulties of pulling off complete albums live and talked about the music that got him to this point. He called in from Charleston, South Carolina, where the band was preparing to open its tour.
Do you get nervous before a tour starts, or have you been doing this so long that it's more routine?
I still deal with a lot of stage anxiety in general. Even well into a tour. It just depends. I've never gotten over that. [I think] I just want personal perfection. I'm not hard on myself after the fact, but there's always a little pre-show nervousness.
This tour is focused on older music, specifically a full performance of The Parallax II: Future Sequence. What's the hardest part about pulling off a full album? It's 11 years old, so people are more familiar with the material.
Yep. It's something we're used to. It's just like any of our material: it's a lot to rehearse, a lot to get together. Most of us, we kind of rehearse on our own. I normally give myself a month before the tour to start working on everything. Then we get up as a band. We had two days before this, so we ran the set twice, and everything's cool. It's a lot of work re-familiarizing yourself with the material. This album, it's got a really good flow, but it's physically taxing on my vocals.
There were only two full band rehearsals? That's surprising for a band whose material is so complex.
It's because we work on it so much on our own. We probably could have played that show the first rehearsal. That's how ready we are. It just makes it easier to show up ready to go, so you don't have to work out kinks. You have to work out the production stuff and just get back to playing as a group, but it's a lot of preparation.
The band always struck me as being organized. I suspect your tours are efficient. And you typically have diverse, challenging bills that pull from different metal and prog genres. How far in advance are albums and tour cycles planned out?
Right now, we're planning this year plus next year a little bit. But it always changes and it's changed a lot since COVID. For instance, this Parallax tour, we've pushed it back. We've been working on this tour for a year and a half now. We were originally going to do this last year, but we got offered the Trivium tour [which played SA's Aztec Theatre last November] and pushed this back. Good support tours are something that don't fall in our lap a whole lot, so we were like, "We've gotta do this."
Sometimes it can be a struggle to describe the band. How do you handle that? Say it's a family event, or an event where people don't know you or your music. How do you explain your music to people? What if they ask you, "What songs do you have on the radio?"
(Laughs.) Luckily, I'm never really in that position where I have to do that. I think that's more of a fan inconvenience. But as far as support tours, it is tough. I don't consider us to be a band that fits in somewhere in particular. We can kinda work with a lot of bands, but sometimes bands' crowds just don't get us, through no fault of their own. You kind of have to look at music as a fan, and [think] of how you looked at live music. One thing for us is it's a lot. If you've never heard BTBAM and you just get an onslaught of 45-plus minutes of material, I'm sure your reaction is, "What the fuck just happened?"
If you could support any band in arenas or stadiums, who would be your dream choice?
That's tough, man. I don't know. I'll listen to bands and think "that would be cool," but it makes no sense and their fans would hate us.
Is that bad? Challenging audiences is a hallmark of the best bands.
I don't know. For instance, that Mastodon and Gojira tour. Every metal band on the planet would love something like that. There's a few top-tier bands that would totally make sense for us. Opeth is a band [that could work]. We've toured with Opeth and Mastodon before, but it's just been so long it would be cool to dive down those roads again. It's just tough to think of a band. Obviously, I'd love to tour with Nine Inch Nails, but a Nine Inch Nails fan wouldn't like us.
Some of those concerns might have been in effect when you went out years ago with Coheed & Cambria. But the crowd seemed to enjoy BTBAM.
We were worried about that one. I remember in particular that there were these D.C. shows that sold out instantly. And we're like, "OK, these are die hard Coheed fans." And it was very obvious the second we got on stage. Both nights the crowd was like, "Who the fuck is this?" But overall, the fans were awesome.
You’ve talked before about enjoying hair metal as a kid. You saw Bon Jovi with Skid Row, a tour that played here in San Antonio as well. What’s your favorite hair metal record?
Goddamn, that’s tough man. I mean, to this day, I’m a die-hard Sebastian Bach fan. As far as vocals go? I’m kinda drawing a blank. That first Skid Row is so good.
What do you think about the second Skid Row album versus the first? Slave to the Grind was one of the few times where a band was able to up the ante from their debut.
I think the second one might be better. It got heavier.
That whole era seems to be enjoying a comeback. The Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard tour has been gigantic. I’m sure you’ve heard the Mick Mars allegations, that most of what Crüe is doing is pre-recorded. It’s fair to say that Mick has won the PR battle, and the band is getting some fan blowback. On the other hand, BTBAM has used tracks as well, though openly. Bassist Dan Briggs missed some shows due to COVID-19 and recorded his parts. And guitarist Dustie Waring had to miss some shows. You had tracks for him as well, though you have Tristen Auman filling in for him now.
Right.
No one objected to those moves from you guys.
For us, the show must go on, and that’s the situation we were in both of those times. With the Dan situation, he got COVID. He recorded — in his hotel room — the album, like as he would live. He did that so it would sound live. With Dustie, we have live recordings. We record sets, just in case we need video or anything we need to do. We used that because it sounded like he was literally there. It’s creepy when you’re onstage. (Laughs.). You know, there’s little mess ups, the live tone. It’s not like we were using album tracks, which would sound really weird. But [as far as Mötley Crüe], I know that’s a big controversy. I think … (pauses) … if you can’t play the stuff and you have to rely on tracks, it’s weird to me. It also depends on the type of music. Very polished, electronic dance music is gonna be a little different than a rock band. A big problem with that too is, from the fan perspective, I think that people are used to hearing music absolutely perfect, now that recordings are perfect. Everything is tuned, everything is quantized. Every snare hit is exactly the same. It’s tough. You go out there and play like a live band from 10 years ago and it doesn’t sound that good compared to a live band that’s filling things up with a guitar tracks and all these things to make it sound more like the record. For us, we have some percussion that none of us are up there playing, but we take pride in being able to play our music, even as crazy as it is. (Tracks are) not something we rely on. But it’s tough to judge bands because you don’t know what the situation is. But it is weird to me. I hear stories that a singer isn’t feeling good, and he’ll give a sign to the sound guy and he runs tracks the rest of the show. As a singer, trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve had nights where I could barely talk, and I sound like complete shit. But part of me is like having those nights where you sound like complete shit is kinda nice to be like, “Dude, I’m fucking human.” I’m sick. I have bronchitis.
You’ve done these full album tours. But you also did a full album of covers from other bands, 2006’s The Anatomy Of. Let’s say you had to win a bet, and to do it you have to cover another band’s full album for a tour. What LP is BTBAM doing?
Right now, I’m insanely obsessed with Scott Weiland. It would be (Stone Temple Pilots’) Purple. There’d be people like, “What the hell is this?” but I’d have fun.
$27-$30, 7 p.m., Thursday, July 20, Vibes Event Center, 1223 E. Houston St., (210) 255-3833, vibeseventcenter.com.
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