Between the Buried and Me are back on their color studies.
Since 2000, the Raleigh, North Carolina-formed metalcore force have burst a veritable rainbow’s worth of musical hues into a vast and varied songbook — key fusion experiments like Colors and Colors II presenting a Pollock splatter rooted in progressive heaviness and from-the-gut roars, yet unafraid to flex elements of jazz, bluesgrass, rock and more when needed.`
On a surface level, the chromatic specificity to the titling of The Blue Nowhere, the band’s new, 11th full-length, might suggest they’ve eased into a more hyper-focused and streamlined era — but to paraphrase another BTBAM classic, this might be a great misdirect.
When asked what the color blue brings to mind for him, vocalist-keyboardist Tommy Rogers says it’s the impression of something “dreamlike [and] very peaceful… even though our music is not that most of the time.” Longtime bandmate and virtuosic guitar player Paul Waggoner suggests there’s still an ocean of hues to explore, here deep ceruleans, cobalts and navys, and that speaks to the act’s ever-rounded sound.
“The color blue is the most fascinating color in the palette, because, depending on the shade, it can connotate [any] emotional state,” the guitarist explains. “Light blues I find to be very serene and comforting, but then as you get to the darker blues… I mean, blues music is about being sad. Maybe The Blue Nowhere encompasses that full range.”
Indeed, The Blue Nowhere proves Between the Buried and Me — Rogers, Waggoner, bassist Dan Briggs and drummer Blake Richardson — are complex as ever. Perhaps more so.
Wildly funky opener “Things We Tell Ourselves in the Dark” mixes pleated-parachute pant Eighties pop with thick-necked howls and abacus-smashing prog-blasts. “The Absent Thereafter” is a 10-minute epic of crushing moshes, Nashville-ripping country lines and horn arrangements conjuring peak-period Huey Lewis. The title track eases into a balladic reprieve, but it’s preceded by “Slow Paranoia,” a feverish mash-up of Chorus Line-sassy Broadway musicals and death-dexterous metal menace.
Through it all, Rogers sings-and-screams through vignettes set at the imagined Blue Nowhere hotel, this involving anything from moments spent with evil-as-fuck ego-trippers, to a group of people “staring at the moon and communicating with it, kind of like [at a] corporate drug retreat.”
Speaking with Revolver, Rogers and Waggoner report on the goings-on in their The Blue Nowhere, sub-par motel experiences and more.
Steph Evans
The Blue Nowhere is set in a hotel. How did you come around to that idea?
TOMMY ROGERS I’ve wanted to write about a hotel for years, now, and when we started working on these songs very early on, I realized that each song feels like it’s in its own space.
Even though they’re part of the same thing, as a whole, they’re very different from one another. They take you into a completely separate world from one another. So, I was like, “This is the perfect record to kind of go with this idea.” I wanted each song to live in a different space in some sort of hotel. I didn’t really know where it would go, [but] in the end, it summed up, the human experience — all the ups and downs that come [with] that.
Can either of you recall the best or worst hotel experience you’ve experienced together, as Between the Buried and Me?
ROGERS Lots of bad.
PAUL WAGGONER It’s probably the worst — definitely the weirdest — but [there was] the infamous Motel 6 outside of Dallas.
ROGERS Oh yeah…back in the old days.
WAGGONER We were super poor, and Motel 6 was kind of the go-to, because back then you could get a room for 30 bucks and pack everybody into it.
We pulled in [and] it had this weird vibe right out of the gate. There was this pimp car — cool looking, but we were like, ‘This is a weird vehicle to see in a Motel 6’. Then we get our keys, and we go up to the room, and I notice there’s all these weird trophies sitting on the windowsill. We open the door, and there’s obviously someone living in this hotel room — the beds are unmade, and it’s all disheveled in there.
We go to the front desk and they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah…sorry,’ and they give us another key. As all that’s going on, we see all this weird activity going on — like a cop pulls up, and then a sex worker gets out of the cop car and goes up to that room that we originally [went into]. We got out of there.
Three weeks later, our friend’s band Hopesfall got robbed. I remember [a] post [said their] trailer got stolen at this hotel outside of Dallas. I immediately hit up one of the guys and was like, ‘Dude, was it a Motel 6?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah!’
So…I’m glad we didn’t stay. I’m glad we did not get robbed, and [that] our friends got robbed instead. [laughs]
But then we’ve had great hotel experiences, too, where you’re staying in a cool resort. I remember we stayed at the InterContinental in Mexico City one time — super posh and beautiful. We were like, ‘What in the world are we doing here?’ So, yeah, it runs the gamut.
ROGERS I think that’s what’s so interesting about hotels in general, just the history and the lives that come in-and-out of these places. They’re vessels for people to ponder life — there’s a lot of loneliness, happiness and sadness. Some of the best and worst times of people’s lives can be in these places.
WAGGONER It can vary from room to room, you know? Like, one room can be a family on vacation, another room’s some guy who’s on a three-week bender, at his lowest point ever.
Leaning into that idea of how a hotel can run the gamut of experience, there are also plenty of different feels running throughout this record. It’s fitting, Tommy, that you start the record off with the words: “fever dream.” Did it feel like you guys were going for it harder than before, with the fusion and experimentation?
ROGERS I think so. The beautiful thing about us when we write is how quickly and organically things start to happen. I think people think we’re spending years and years piecing these songs together, but the beauty of having a group that works so well together is once you all agree to start diving in, things just start happening.
You’ve said that “Things We Tell Ourselves in the Dark” is about ego, but there’s a line in here that seems to speak to how it might be working within the band: “The machine-like precision to rid me of concern.” We could be misconstruing this, but you could look at this line as being about the well-oiled machine that is Between the Buried and Me — and it’s a lyric that precedes a crazy technical pivot in the song…
ROGERS Well…I will say it has nothing to do with the band. A lot of this stuff was me just frantically writing [things down]. I think people have the idea that I’m sitting here with every line, and it’s like, ‘Ok, this line’s gonna mean this,’ when that’s not really the case. It’s more that I’m trying to capture [a] moment. I would assume, with that line, that it’s from this guy’s perspective, or whoever the song is about. He’s just saying he’s perfect. He’s quick, he has machine-like precision.
The prompt I gave myself for this song was: ‘How does this make me feel?’ [“Things We Tell Ourselves in the Dark”] was a very different song for BTBAM. The song has a lot of confidence. And I immediately imagined someone walking into this posh hotel, and just kind of looking down on everybody. I basically created this horrible person, and wrote a song about it.
With ego…if you have too much of it, it causes horrible things in your life. It’s something we need to shed.
Have you had to shed your own ego as the band has progressed?
ROGERS I think we learned ages ago that you never hold things too close to yourself. Because we all write a lot, you can spend hours and hours and hours on something that’s just not going to work.
The goal for all of us is we want good songs and good albums, and sometimes things just don’t work. But sometimes things happen [further] down the road. For instance, one of the main riffs in “Absent Thereafter” was something Paul wrote during [2018’s] Automata, right, Paul?
WAGGONER Yeah, probably ten years ago.
ROGERS At that time, I know Paul was very close to that part, and it was awesome, but it just didn’t feel right for anything we were writing [at the time].
WAGGONER Yeah, they didn’t like it. They told me to fuck off, and that was hurtful. [laughs]
ROGERS We were trying to shed your ego!
WAGGONER It’s funny, man…as Tommy said, we write as individuals, in our own spaces, and you can’t help but have a vision for all this stuff. But you have to be open to the fact that once you share it with the group, it becomes community property. You have to be open-minded to the fact that the vision might change. It becomes a collective vision, as opposed to just an individual vision. That’s tough when you’re younger — it’s a little bit of a sting — but as we’ve grown as a band and as a family, [you understand that it’s] always for the best.
There’s been a ruffling of the feathers over the years, but [with] the past several records, we’ve developed such a great chemistry that it’s not a thing anymore. As individuals, we have shed that egotistical approach to music, which is a good thing.
I think a lot of other bands go through that, too. With Brent from Mastodon passing away [recently], I watched a making-of documentary, and they say the same thing. With bands that have multiple songwriters…once you present your idea to the group, it’s not yours anymore. You have to be okay with that.
Paul, you’d previously called The Blue Nowhere’s title track, which is a subtler ballad, almost “peculiar” in its straightforwardness. How unnatural was it for you folks, as extreme fusionists, to just chill and ride out the tempo?
WAGGONER Oh, for me, it was not unnatural at all. I wish we wrote more stuff like that. Easy to learn, easy to play.
The birth of that song was so weird, because I think Tommy mentioned to me in passing one time, “Man, we should do a yacht-rock song.” I was like, “Say no more!” And then I started working on it.
It took some people aback, obviously — like the fans — but it came together super organically. The opportunity to explore different tones, [or] Tommy exclusively melodic singing, [or] that verse-chorus-verse kind of thing — it’s not as unnatural as people would think for us. We do like music like that.
ROGERS We probably listen to more music in that format than the format we normally write in. I’m not really listening to crazy-ass metal much.
WAGGONER Yeah, exactly. [And] it challenged us to show some restraint, [to] not make it this grandiose thing. It was fun to do, and I think it’s weirder for our fans to hear it than it was for us to write it. It was just an opportunity for us to explore that side of ourselves.
On the idea of that being a yacht-rocking song, have you folks ever played a metal cruise?
ROGERS We haven’t, no…but if we do, we’ll only play that song over and over again.
WAGGONER A lot of our friends do those cruises. I’ve never been on a cruise at all…I don’t think I would like a cruise.
It’s like a hotel on the water!
WAGGONER I think it would feel a little claustrophobic…I’d probably freak out, you know?
Trying to pin down the influences can be a fruitless exercise, but is there any Huey Lewis & the News to the way those horns hit in “Absent Thereafter”? Like a real “The Heart of Rock & Roll” thing?
WAGGONER Absolutely. Dan added that element to it, and I think he literally mentioned Huey Lewis & the News when he pitched that. But as a guitar player, I was basically trying to write a song like, “What if Eddie Van Halen, [blues/jazz player] Danny Gatton, and [bluegrass banjoist] Earl Scruggs wrote a metal song?”
This interview has been edited and condensed for flow and clarity.
The Blue Nowhere is out tomorrow (September 12th) via Inside Out Music. Between the Buried and Me also launch their fall tour with Hail the Sun this Sunday (September 14th)