Words: Steve Knapp

Let’s get this out of the way first: Coma Ecliptic is going to upset a lot of Between the Buried and Me fans. Not because of offensive content or anything subjective like that, this album will polarize purely because of the jump it made from the release that precedes it. And while I know this is going to be the case, I can’t quite understand why. BtBaM have never been content with sitting idly on their hands; they have that evolutionary itch for progression. They could’ve easily (relatively speaking) made another Colors or The Parallax II: Future Sequence, but instead they’ve taken the lessons they’ve learned and fused them with where they want to go. And what’s wrong with that? Absolutely nothing. And while this album is a move more towards Dream Theater than say Last Chance to Reason, it has put them on a path that very few have walked before.

The biggest worry in a statement like this is that they run the risk of moving away from what made them so great in the first place, but that’s simply not the case. You still get a solid mix of harsh and clean vocals from Giles, guitars still twist in a melodic frenzy and the rhythm section is still one of the best out there right now; in short, you still get Between the Buried and Me. So what does Coma Ecliptic do differently? It takes the madness of their previous albums and ever so slightly decompresses it. This album makes sure it takes time to breathe, simple as that.

The band has matured even further and exercises a restraint that sets so many of the best classic prog bands a part from the pack. Their discipline becomes immediately apparent within the first two tracks. The opener, “Node”, is at home with their other releases—a broodingly beautiful introduction—but instead of immediately diving into an all out musical barrage, it transitions into “The Coma Machine”, which has the grandeur of a stage production rather than the freight train intensity of a thrash concert. This style is revisited again in what could be the strongest track on the album, “The Ectopic Stroll.”

This isn’t to say the album is without its share of craziness. Songs like “Turn On the Darkness” throw us right into the album’s concept of an introspective, time-traveling dive down the rabbit hole of a man stuck in a coma. It’s the band’s ability to bring these wild moments together with a familiar structure that puts the album on another plain altogether.

Coma Ecliptic was the exact step BtBaM needed to take. It won’t necessarily click with fans more partial to releases like Alaska, but it is by far their most technically proficient and mature work to date. And while the ending of the album comes all too soon (that tack could’ve been twice as long), it shows that the band knows exactly where it needs to be to grow musically and more than please their dedicated fans.

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Score: 4.8/5

Between the Buried and Me: Website