Quote:
Originally Posted by khfreek
This review has been bugging me since I saw it, so just decide to reply. You keep talking about bands that can "get away with" the melding of genres and that other bands should leave it to Agalloch and Kayo Dot. Isn't the whole point of experimentation that you can't be wrong, you can only be pushing the envelope further? You can't decide who's doing it right or wrong based on your tastes, no one can.
This melding of genres that makes you dislike the album so much is what made a lot of others see it as metal album of the year. Where it throws you off completely with a jazzy intermission, others see the connection and love it. That must be why you felt the album was trying "cram in" all this different material, where as I hear it as a fluid masterpiece, where the each part intuitively goes into the next.
And to write BTBAM off as "generic metalcore" that uses blast beats all the time is just wrong. Paul Waggoner's jazzy guitar influence coupled with Blake Richardson being one of the best drummers in metalcore totally propels them past generic, if not in quality then at least in the variety. If you ever decide to give it another spin, listen to the drumming, it's fantastic.
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I know this is your favourite Metal album and I admire you standing up for it but let's expand a little on my reasoning. For a start, without dragging the 'age' card out, I have to point out that I have heard literraly thousands of albums with probably a quarter of those being Metal. It is quite difficult to hear new Metal albums these days and still be impressed. I have heard it all before and lots of bands just keep rehashing ideas or they try something different and fall flat on their face.
On this album the riffs are generic. They don't sound any different to what I have heard before and they certainly are'nt memorable. Then there are those little interludes that we are talking about. That's why they fail. It's the band saying "look I know a little Jazz riff, let's put it in to sound different" but they don't. If they carried that theme on and went off on a tangent then my interest would have been piqued. however the band slip straight back into average Metal riffs and it's the same old, same old.
I mention Kayo dot because to me, that is experimentation. They are not a metal band. They are an avant garde band that when they incorporate Metal, they sound fresh and original. I have nothing against experimentation and I stated that BTBAM are good musicians but the album was unremarkable for me.
This is what I prefer if it's experimental Metal (and please listen to the song through to the end):
The interlude is extended, the themes are continued and the rythms don't conform as generically as many Metal bands.
BTBAM are a band that don't have the conviction to become truly experimental and instead rely of unmemorable music punctuated by interludes that are more showing of than a statement of intention. If you like the band then great, you asked me to review it and I responded. Sometimes it's nice to have another perspective.