Music

Between The Buried and Me on AUX TV's HARD Tonight at 10PM

by Theo Kapodistrias

In the summer HARD had the opportunity to talk to Between the Buried and Me during their tour with In Flames and Killswitch Engage. Consequently, HARD staff acquired an interview from the band that was both interesting and littered with hilarious digressions. Not only does the band have a remarkable insight into their craft—the band members turned out to be incredibly fun, engaging people and provided an interview that to this day is one of our favourites here at HARD.

BTBAM’s latest musical effort is a record entitled The Great Misdirect. Characteristic of the band’s progressive style The Great Misdirect encapsulates the band’s flare for creating non-linear, complex metal. “I like music that is interesting and music that keeps you on your toes and I think when we write music we try to create things that make the listener curious what’s going to happen next; I think with a lot of bands you know exactly what’s going to happen at every moment,” explained singer / keyboardist Tommy Rogers. “There are a lot of bands like Tool and The Mars Volta where when you put on the cd you don’t know what to expect and I think with each record we try to achieve that in some way; we don’t want there to ever be a complete formula where we know what’s going to happen when we write and where our fans are going to know when they listen.”

“With each record I think part of our progression with our sound and as a band [has to do] with pushing our selves as musicians and [being] naturally forced to get better. I’m a better bass player today than I was yesterday,” explained bassist Dan Briggs when talking about how the band keeps their music interesting.

With The Great Misdirect BTBAM strives to be technically proficient and musically intricate; that being said, we posed the question to the band ‘do you think your music can be too challenging to the listener?’ Guitarist Paul Waggoner responded lightheartedly: “The listener, we don’t care [about]. I’m mostly concerned about ‘can I play the shit?’ But I like the challenge–this new record has a lot of stuff that is hard to execute. I think that is fun. We do challenge ourselves so when we actually play the stuff live we feel accomplished.”

Paul completed the interview with a loving proclamation. “I’ve actually never told Tommy this and I’d like to like to put it on record: I’m really proud of the way you’ve developed as a musician over the years. You’ve come a long way as a vocalist and as a keyboardist.”

Tommy responded, “Paul, you’ve really come a long way as well. We should get an apartment together again.”

Watch the episode featuring Between the Buried and Me, along with interviews with Killswitch Engage and In Flames tonight at 10PM on AUX followed by the HARD video flow.