An Evening With Between The Buried And Me
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An Evening With Between The Buried And Me

One of the most innovative prog-metal bands in the game, Between The Buried and Me are bringing their frantic, theatrical feast of intense, riffing raw energy to Australia for three intimate shows only this summer. The shows will see Between The Buried And Me play two sets each night of almost 20 years of music. We sat down with the North Carolina quintet’s lead vocalist and keys Tommy Giles Rogers, Jr.

The first time you guys came out to Australia was back in 2009 with Bleeding Through, which followed the release of the ‘Colors’ album and preceded ‘The Great Misdirect’ release. Since then you guys have been a regular visitor with each release and even for special event tours such as the one coming up next year. Being not the easiest of places to visit, is there a reason it has been important to continue regularly visiting Australia, and how do you think the Australian fanbase has changed and evolved along with your own evolution since that first tour?
I mean hopefully the fan base has gotten bigger. We’re very lucky that we’ve had continued interest over there. We’ve always had a really good relationship with Australia, and it is quite a journey but we always try to fit it into all our album cycles. We wanted to do something special over there, do the ‘evening with’ thing which we just did in Europe and it was a really good experience for us and we thought it would do well in Australia so hopefully that’s the case.

With the Bleeding Through tour, we were one of the few bands who were lucky enough to play – that tour was 14 days or something – and we were in a van so we got to see a lot of the country whereas now you just do… like, for instance, this tour is just three dates and you fly in everyday and kind of don’t get to check out the land. That Bleeding Through tour, it was so cool to see the small towns, and the pretty seaside towns and the middle of nowhere. It was cool. See I think maybe because of that we’ve always had quite a strong connection to the country and I think maybe even people that were around back then kind of have a connection with us because of that. It was kind of a weird tour for us as far as the type of bands, but it was a really good tour for us, it was a great experience. We’ll see what happens.

Over the years your musical style has evolved significantly as well. Could you run us through the journey as to how a band writes an album like say, ‘The Silent Circus’ which edges into progressive elements while basing itself essentially in the modern metal genre, to where the journey has found you to be now with the release of the ‘Automata’ volumes?
Oh man, the thing is just like anything you kind of take it one step at a time and when I think about an album like The Silent Circus compared to now, I’m almost 17 years older since that record. We’re going to be 20 years into the band next year and just like anything, you grow and your taste changes; I understand music more now, I hope to think I’m better at my craft now.

I think as a band we work together better now than we used to. I think what’s exciting about our albums is that they’re very genuine in that time period and I think albums should represent the musicians in that moment of time and I think when I listen to an album like The Silent Circus or the self-titled, it’s absolutely perfect for where we were at that time, the music we wanted to write at that time. Up to this point, I feel like we’re writing the kind of music we really want to write now, and I take pride in the fact that we’ve always kind of being a band that you know goes by the beat of our own drum and we’ve never really taken a path that we thought would lead to success, we always took a path that kind of felt good for us, and was very organic for us. That’s been the journey, we’ve always just tried to be really genuine in our writing and as a group. It’s slowly evolved into something different than it was. Back then we just wanted to write crazy-ass, weird music.

I think the only thing that has really been at the core of all of our albums and how we write is we’ve always wanted to, since day one, be a band that isn’t afraid to branch out and try new things. Even when you listen to ‘reaction’ off Silent Circus, it was such a weird type of song for a band like us, especially in that time period so it’s cool to kind of look back and see that it’s always been in our DNA. We’re all huge fans of different types of music and to hear that we’ve always incorporated it into our sound slowly and I think now we’re more comfortable, we have the skill now to incorporate even more things in our music than say what we did in the past. It could have been a total disaster if we tried certain things we do now back then. It’s all about knowing your limits and your comfort zones and being genuine in writing what just comes out of you naturally.

With a style that explores so many diverse genres and clearly has a massive range of influences across members, it almost seems like each individual member of the writing process has their own unique influences and roles in what ends up becoming a BTBAM song. Can you give us an idea of the different members’ musical influences, and how each person’s role in the writing process contributes to the overall process?
That’s very true. I think that’s what’s so cool about being in this band, we constantly kind of surprise each other with things we write. We all individually write normally before we start putting songs together and I think that’s one of the exciting parts about the creative process is kind of seeing where the other guy’s minds are in that time period. We were all kind of changing, we all write differently in certain moments in our lives and I think a lot of times we surprise each other with the kind of stuff we’re writing.

I wouldn’t say we all have a certain style per se but I guess Dan [Briggs, on bass, keyboards] is like the prog guy, he writes a lot of the weirder, kind of proggier stuff. Paul [Waggoner, lead and rhythm guitar, backing and lead vocals] is a lot more classical metal and cool intricate layered guitar stuff, I write a lot of the weird electronic stuff and the real brutal, grindy deathly guitar stuff, and Dustie [Waring, rhythm and lead guitar] is always being a death metal guy and cool kind of rock riff guy. Blake [Richardson, drums] is really good at really helping shape a song and helping with structure and transitions and trimming the fat. I think he’s got a really good grasp on the end result of a song and not to mention his drums have, he’s written a lot of stuff that’s spawned some really cool moments because of his drumming. But all that changes, each album, and each song, it differs how we write. I’ve always found it silly when people are constantly trying to prove to the world that they write; we’re a band. We write. It’s our band and we’re all a very important part of the puzzle, and without any of us it would be a very different thing. We’re very lucky that we work well together. Hopefully the next record will be a great puzzle, and hopefully, the others ones were to people as well.

Between The Buried And Me will hit the Corner Hotel in Melbourne on Saturday February 29. Tickets are on sale via livenation.com.au.