Between The Buried and Me
Alaska

March 2006
Released: 2005, Victory Records
Rating: 4.0/5
Reviewer: Asassinkiller

To prepare the Between the Buried and Me´s latest gourmet dish, you will need the following deadly ingredients: 3 Death Metal CDs, 1 Hardcore, 1 Melodeath, 1 Black Metal, 2 Progressive Metal ones and some spices of experimental music. After you have them all, you will throw them in a power blender and crush them in maximum speed. The final outcome will be this devastating and ever changing Extreme Metal offering known as ALASKA. And the best part of all is that no matter what type of heavy as a really heavy thing of Metal you like, this will appeal to you.



To tell you the truth I was very skeptical about listening to this album, especially with this modern teenage virus known as Metalcore, which I thought the band belonged too. Thankfully I was mistaken, badly mistaken, cause it would be really sad, to see such a capable just screaming like pigs, jumping around like idiots and doing hyper-boring breakdowns every 2 seconds.



In “All Bodies”, the band shows how if done the right way, a song can go from Death Metal, to Progressive, and from here to Black Metal flawlessly. In “Selkies: The Endless Obsession”, the band travels from Dream Theater to Opeth and ends with an extremely beautiful solo from the Petrucci school of rock. “The Primer” song starts with an awesome mid 90’s Melodeath rhythm that will have many (old) In Flames fans jacking off, before it turns into al all out war Black Metal rhythm. In “Backwards Marathon” there is this pretty experimental part that sounds a lot like The Mars Volta that simply kills. I could go like this forever but I think you got the point of the diversity here.



Big thumbs up to Between the Buried and Me for dedicating so much time and craftsmanship into this release. If this one simply blew me away from out of nowhere, I can’t wait for my head to be chopped off in the next release. Highly recommended. Stay Heavy!!!