It was fifteen years ago that a band out of Raleigh, North Carolina by the name of Between the Buried and Me was forged. With a broad range of styles ranging from Prog-Rock to Death Metal, and strokes of other genres mixed in, Between the Buried has seen a steady, organic progression in their sound over the years. Known to challenge themselves and their audiences with epic concept-based records like the saga of 2011’s The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues and 2012’s The Parallax II: Future Sequence, Between the Buried and Me return in 2015 with their newest creation, Coma Ecliptic. Holding no reservations of who and what they are, the five musicians have reached a point in their story where they have grown both as a unit and personally. Recently we sat down with Bassist Dan Briggs to talk the evolution of Between the Buried and Me, Coma Ecliptic, expanding musical horizons, touring, movies, and more.
CrypticRock.com – Between the Buried and Me came together some fifteen years ago. In that time, the band has become one of the most respected in the Progressive Metal genre. You joined the band about a decade ago, tell us, what has your time in the band been like?
Dan Briggs – It has both flown and felt like ten years. I think the biggest time I feel it is when I look back at music that we wrote in 2007, then I look at where we are right now and I can see how the progression happened. I look back and I was twenty years old writing that stuff on Alaska, now I’m thirty-one. It has been kind of a crazy and fun journey to be able to celebrate the decade mark with turning a decade older myself as well. It has been about constantly learning and evolving. That has not changed over the last ten plus years, including the record that we put out this past year. That includes everything else that I work on outside of the band. It is all about moving forward, that has been the key and the main thing. It is great to make a living doing it for over a decade. I was in school studying music, that is what I wanted to do. I did not know my capacity, but it has been great.
- Victory Records
- Victory Records
CrypticRock.com – It is amazing. As you stated, you have grown as a person as well as grown with the band. A decade is a long time, a lot changes, especially between your 20s and your 30s.
Dan Briggs – You could say that we all have, we have grown together for sure. We just celebrated our drummer Blake’s marriage a few weeks ago. That was a big thing, the second guy to get married in the band. It is just kind of crazy just sitting around, looking around at each other. It is hard to remember life without those guys really at this point.
CrypticRock.com – You are like a family now. The band has grown a lot , as you mentioned. You have done concept records in the past. What is it like working within the diameters of a concept record opposed to one that is not a concept record?
Dan Briggs – I love it. Personally, a lot of my favorite records for years, even before I knew or understood the structure of a concept record, were those kind of albums. The ones that played out as kind of a cohesive piece and telling a story. It is a very natural thing for us to do. When I look back at our records, the ones that I loved the most and am the most excited about are the ones that we kind of wrote as these big, cohesive pieces, opposed to a kind of random assortment of songs. The other groups I am in, we do not write concept records, though I still have that thing that I am trying to figure out the track listing. After you have written all the music and what feels like it would work well, it is fun to do those things I guess. Between the Buried and Me, the fact that we had the opportunity, with the vocalist that we have, to be able to tell the stories and articulated to the artwork, it is awesome; to be able to do that and have it come to life, especially when we play it live with video and such. Pretty much this tour and this whole cycle that we are doing the next couple of years is leading up to us playing the whole record. We will probably be doing that about a year from now, just because of engagements that we have until then. That is going to be a big and rewarding moment when we finally get to do it.
- Victory Records
- Victory Records
CrypticRock.com – It does sound exciting. You just mentioned the latest record, Coma Ecliptic, came out in July. This record further exemplifies the band’s growth after listening to it. What was the writing and recording process behind this new record?
Dan Briggs – It is the same as the old ones where the actually writing and the music happens at home. Arranging and fine tuning happens in the room together. With Coma Ecliptic, I would say it was more put together before we actually got in the room together; full compositions. We would get together every Monday through Wednesday. On Monday we would start a new song, and by the end of Wednesday we would demo it. Blake is always recording his drums all along the way. Actually learning parts, do that from scratch, going back later, and finalize the parts, it was great working that way one song at a time over the course of three days. We would take off through the weekend, come back on Monday, and maybe change anything that felt like it needed to be changed in the arrangement. Then we just start the next song. We kind of plowed through it just like that. We did not have any hang-ups or creative lulls. It was kind of as if we were ahead of the curve big-time, even before we got into the room together. I like to work like that. The kind of band that we are, we are not very good spontaneous writers. We can do small things like transition, but we do not sit in the room and jam together or anything. It is the kind of stuff that we work out at home beforehand.
CrypticRock.com – That is understandable, it certainly works well with the record. Coma Ecliptic has a really heavy Prog-Rock influence, maybe more than other records before it that you have done. What inspired that direction to have that sound this time around?
Dan Briggs – It has always been in the music I think. Over the history of the band, it is just pushed more to the forefront. That just ties in with, especially on this album, wanting to do more with melody and stuff; really pushing that to the forefront. That was something that was new for us; Tommy singing probably 90% of his vocals on the album as opposed to screaming, it was the way it was kind of moving. In general, that is the kind of music that is exciting to us. Our band has always kind of been this Progressive Metal one mixing all kinds of different influences. The Prog-Rock stuff was getting mixed in with Death Metal stuff and with Space Rock sort of stuff. We are still kind of doing that, but its more focused now.
CrypticRock.com – Well, that happens as you progress as a musician and as a band as a whole. You kind of pinpoint the direction you want to go in and you go from there. How are you finding the fans are receiving the record?
Dan Briggs – It has been great; awesome so far. I do not think it was anything that was ultimately shocking, but at the same time it was not like anything was regurgitated from the past. We did enough new stuff, but I do not think it was anything that was such a left turn. Our progression over the last ten years with Alaska has kind of been gradual from record to record where we take steps in a new direction. If we had done this album after Alaska instead of doing Colors (2007), just kind of going full on Prog-Rock, I think we probably would have lost a lot of fans. We would not have had all the years of touring and playing in front of new people to kind of have garnered new fans with more of the Progressive Metal and Rock sound. I think we did it the right way, it has always felt natural and right for us. At this time, when we wrote this record in 2014, that is what felt right for sure.
- Metal Blade Records
CrypticRock.com – Right, that makes sense. You have to go with what feels right. As you mentioned, you have played in front of a lot of different audiences because you have toured with a lot of different types of bands. You really have not stuck with one genre type of Metal, touring with a variety of bands. One can imagine that gives you a broader fan base to connect with.
Dan Briggs – Yes, it is awesome. It gives us a broad range of ages too, which is really cool. It was harder for us to appeal to a sort of older crowd. When we toured with Dream Theater is 2008, I think that helped a lot. There are people that listen to stuff like Yes or Rush growing up, and we are all of a sudden hearing that band, being like, “Alright, I think I hear that, even though this is something that I might not have sort out on my own just because of the nature of maybe the screaming.” There have been those tours along the way that have definitely helped us. The last album, we were able to go out with Coheed and Cambria, and with Meshuggah. Those two bands alone are so different from each other, such different fans. It is nice we can still do stuff like that and reach a lot of different people.
CrypticRock.com – Absolutely, agreed. Besides Between the Buried and Me, you have other outlets as well. You have Orbs and Trioscapes which you are part of. Do you enjoy having those variety of creative outlets to explore within?
Dan Briggs – Oh yes. Each one is a stepping stone in the evolution of being a musician. Everything that I learn during that album’s writing process will influence the next group, and the next one, and the next one; not necessarily in sound. I have learned a lot from my writing partner in Orbs, she has always helped me understand songs structures. When we started writing, it was after we did Colors. At the time, our songs were still jam-packed with riff after riff. Writing with Ashley has really helped me step back to look at a song to analyze where the bigger themes and ideas that are wort really are. That is something that I started adapting to the way that I wrote In Between the Buried and Me. Then I have a group like Trioscapes that is totally different from anything else that I do. It is basically about just the energy that is created with three maniacs in a room together; that is really fun too. It is less about the written composition and more about the improvisation going on. There is a lot of insanity in a different way and it is fun.
CrypticRock.com – It has to be. One can imagine it all keeps you very busy as well with all these projects.
Dan Briggs – It keeps me busy, but we wrote this album, and we are not going to play it in full until probably next Fall. It is not like I am going to not write music over that time. It is hard for me to write new Between the Buried and Me music until I feel that I have really moved on from the album before. That point is not until the Fall of 2016, then I won’t be digging into writing new stuff until after that point. The thing that I love most in life is writing music and being creative. I think that is how the necessity to have these other bands kind of burst. After writing Colors, where I had all this creative energy, but I could not for the life of me write for In Between the Buried and Me at that moment. Thankfully, Orbs came into my life right then, and I have been able to tack on new projects as I meet interesting musicians to work with. It keeps me busy, but they never really overlap. Everything exists when it feels like the creative urge happens for that. It is not so much like it is two years now, we have to write a new record.
- Equal Vision
- Metal Blade Records
CrypticRock.com – It is all natural, it makes perfect sense. Now you actually had mentioned about touring with Between the Buried and Me, you are just kicking off a tour with Enslaved, Intronaut, and Native Construct. That is a really good lineup right there. How excited are you for this tour?
Dan Briggs – I am excited. All three bands we are fans of, that alone is something really cool and looking forward too. Native Construct, I am pretty sure it is their first full US tour; they are a super young band. They are pretty new, but their music is really exciting. It is cool to be able to take them and put them in front of our fans, and be like, “This is a new band that you probably don’t know, but it’s something that we are really into.” As well as a band like Intronaut, that you have probably heard, and of course Enslaved. These are other bands that we are really into and feel like are really interesting Progressive Metal bands that kind of fills the full spectrum of the genre.
CrypticRock.com – Agreed, completely. You look at this lineup, you have bands like Enslaved, which has been around for over twenty years. Then you have Intronaut, which has been around for a little while, and yourselves, which have been around for fifteen years. Then the young band. It is a perfect mix of age groups, it gives people the older, the younger, and the in between.
Dan Briggs – I agree, it is going to be really great. I am excited. We are playing a couple of new songs that we have not played off the album and we are playing some stuff that we have not played in eight years or so (laughs). That is going to be a lot of fun. We are going to pay some homage to the ten year anniversary of Alaska a little bit. The anniversary means a lot to us, the hard thing is fitting a lot of stuff from that album into where the band is now and making it cohesive in the set. We really try to form our sets in a way to where they feel as cohesive as possible and not kind of super drastic and out of left field. I think we found out a neat way to do that. I am looking forward to that on this tour as well.
- Between the Buried and Me live at Sundance Saloon in Waukegan, Illinois on 7-30-15
CrypticRock.com – As you said, you wanted to keep it cohesive, the band has such a broad range of sound from the beginning to where we are now. One can imagine that has to be difficult to keep everything together, but it will be exciting for sure. I had one last question for you and it is pertaining to movies. CrypticRock.com covers all types of music, but we also cover Horror films. If you are a fan of Horror, or even Sci-fi films, do you have any favorites?
Dan Briggs – I am a fan. In the last year, I loved It Follows (2015). I thought that was a really original Horror/Thriller and had some Sci-Fi moments to it as well. At times, it felt like a Twilight Zone sort of feel where you really were not sure what time period it was. I really dug that. The thing that I really liked about that movie was the soundtrack and the cinematography. The way it was shot, it felt like it really had an artful nature to it within the genre. I am trying to think what I watched during the Halloween season. Zombi 2 (1980), that was pretty intense. Musically, I am a big fan of stuff from the genre, I love John Carpenter and Goblin, that kind of stuff. I am definitely excited to see the film that corresponds with that music. I just saw The Martian (2015) the other day, that was a cool one. It did not feel that much Science Fiction like. It is obviously set in the future a bit, but it seemed pretty practical as far as a Space Adventure sort of movie.
CrypticRock.com – Those are two to check out. It Follows’ soundtrack is very synth-based, which is really cool. It kind of gives you that feel of a ’70s or an ’80s Horror film.
Dan Briggs – I have listened to it by itself, away from the movie, on a bright sunny day, and it still freaks me out so bad. I think that is a true testament to the music and how unsettling it is.
- The Jerry Gross Organization
- Dimension Films
CrypticRock.com – Totally. Soundtracks that John Carpenter and Goblin have done, they really create an atmosphere that emphasize the eeriness of the film a lot more.
Dan Briggs – Yes, actually I just watched Turbo Kid (2015), which I believe is a Canadian-New Zealand produced film that was really good. It had some great campy gore elements to it, but was kind of a cool dystopian, coming-of-age Adventure movie. It has a super ’80s synth-based soundtrack. It was awesome, a very cool movie.
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