Between the Buried and Me have never shrunk from excess. Since the early 2000s, the North Carolina band have practised a sprawling progressive metal, where death metal rubs shoulders with jazz, fusion and the most improbable lyrical soars. Colors II openly positions itself as a sequel to Colors (2007), the album that made their legend: an ambitious, almost reckless declaration of intent.
The critics (an 82 average across seven reviews) hail this teeming fresco and the nerve of a band that dares to measure itself against its own myth. They praise the collective virtuosity, the inventiveness of the transitions, and the quintet’s capacity to string together the irreconcilable — the brutal and the melodic, the solemn and the grotesque — with astonishing coherence.
Musically, the record is a vertigo: over an hour of music in perpetual mutation, where each listen reveals a detail, a motif, an unnoticed fork. The keyboard of Tommy Rogers dialogues with acrobatic guitars, in an uninterrupted flow that refuses any concession to song form.
That generosity can nonetheless tip into overload: in seeking to summon everything, Colors II demands a certain endurance, and its profusion can unseat whoever seeks landmarks. The patient listener, though, will find in it an inexhaustible labyrinth.
Verdict: 8/10. An outsized, exhilarating record confirming Between the Buried and Me among the boldest architects of American progressive metal.
