Between the Buried and Me Claim New Album Is Not a Concept Record

The sixth album by North Carolina extreme progressive band Between the Buried and Me, 'The Great Misdirect,' sure has the makings of a monster concept album. The disc features just six songs -- the last of which, 'Swim to the Moon,' is 18 minutes long. There are lyrics about aliens and mystical codes and vocalist Tommy Rogers tells Noisecreep the title is a reference to the human brain and how mankind is misled by its mind.

"Humans naturally want to understand everything in life whether it's aliens or religion," Rogers says. "I feel like people need to step back and accept the fact that we won't understand everything. We're not perfect. So 'The Great Misdirect' is basically about how our brain misdirects us."

As thematic as all that sounds, guitarist Paul Waggoner insists the albums is definitely not a concept record. "Our last album, 'Colors,' was a concept record, so we wanted to not do that this time," he tells Noisecreep. "We wanted to have individual songs, and even though there are only six songs on the album, we wanted them to each have a life of their own."

In that regard, 'The Great Misdirect' was easier for the band to write that 'Colors' even though it features more musical and stylistic twists and turns. "We never felt like we had to bring back previous elements of songs, so we could approach each song as its own entity," Waggoner says. "From start to finish, it sounds like an album, which I'm really happy about."