Between The Buried And Me Tackle Alien Abductions, Criminalization of Music on New LP

Its been two years since progressive metallers Between the Buried and Me released its well-received LP 'Colors,' and on October 27, Victory Records will release the band's last record for the label, 'The Great Misdirect.' Containing six songs and running just over an hour in length, the album is an epic collection of awesome sound with lyrics to match, says frontman Tommy Rogers.

"A lot of the record deals with the human brain," he explains. "There's definitely a lot to do with alien abductions, and one song is about a group of people who write music in the desert, because music is outlawed across the entire Earth. I get borderline obsessed with certain topics, and that bleeds into my lyrics. During the writing of this record, I got really obsessed with the human brain, magic and code, and wrote a song about all of that. I got obsessed with freaking alien abduction and stuff like that. It's basically what's in my head. I want to create stories and lyrics that go well with our music, because it is so dynamic. I want the lyrics to follow that."

While Rogers wouldn't say whether the band would be signing a new contract with Victory ("It's too early to tell," he says), he does think that 'The Great Misdirect' achieves the band's initial goal – to push the limits of musical expression.

"When we started this band, the big goal was not having limits as far as what we wanted to do musically, and as musicians, there's a lot of freedom in this band," Rogers adds. "We're not opposed to trying anything. And I love having that freedom, to know that the limits are endless, and that we won't be afraid to try anything. It's awesome. I hope we keep evolving as musicians, and writing better and better music."

But in an age where pushing the envelope seems to be the only way to get anyone's attention, BTBAM were careful not to force anything.

"When you try to push the envelope, that's when things can go wrong," Rogers offers. "When you're, like, 'We gotta write something that's different, that stands out,' that's when you're forcing yourself to be weird or technical, just for the sake of doing it. The reason why our music is so unique is because all five of us write and in a lot of bands, its not like that. We all write stuff on our own, and put it all together, and its such a collaboration of ideas. It comes out sounding unique without really trying."

He says Between the Buried and Me's sound is an amalgamation of everyone's input, and that each members' particular influence can be detected in most of the band's songs.

"We never go in and say, 'We need this kind of part' or 'We need this kind of part.' We just write, and see what happens. It's always a fun building process, because you feed off of each other, and you feed off of other peoples' ideas. The day we start forcing things out is the day we need to stop making music. Right now, it's fun to write because its very organic, and we're really expressing what we're feeling."