by Between the Buried and Me release The Parallax II: Future Sequence on October 9, 2012. Until then, you can enjoy this nine-minute video that on the recording process for the guitar, bass, and drum on the 12-track album.
Between the Buried and Me have not made a name for themselves through playing it safe. Pushing the envelope of heavy music with each successive release, they have continually evolved in thrilling new directions while maintaining the honesty and integrity that has connected with so many listeners. With The Parallax II: Future Sequence, the first concept album of their career, the North Carolina-based unit have delivered its most complex, ambitious, and accomplished work to date.
“We’re certainly not the average metal band – we write what we want to write, and we’ve never really tried to fit in anywhere,” states guitarist Paul Waggoner. “With this record we held nothing back. We were excited to experiment and see where it took us, and working with a concept was a really interesting new challenge.”
Explaining the concept behind The Parallax II: Future Sequence
The concept was first introduced to the band’s fans with 2011’s The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP, which established the narrative’s two characters, Prospect I and Prospect II, the story commencing with the events of Parallax II. Separated by millions of light years, the two men exist in ignorance of the other, yet are intrinsically connected by a shared soul, which ultimately brings them together.
“Both men exist in isolation, one because he runs away from the life that is his and the other when he leaves his dying planet in the hopes of creating new life elsewhere, through the planting of souls,” explains vocalist Tommy Rogers. “As the story progresses you realize they are actually the same person, and at the end of the journey they’re responsible for destroying all life as they know it, reinforcing the idea that humanity is a destructive species, and that there’s some kind of innate flaw about us that causes us to destroy everything we touch.”
While the story is very much based in fiction and grounded in the imagination of Rogers, it was important that the vocalist was able to emotionally connect with it, and relate it to his own life, thereby making it relatable for listeners. “That was probably the hardest thing for me, making sure I could find that connection. The main thing that these characters go through is confusion and isolation, and I think that’s something every person deals with in [his/her life] at some point. As a musician you spend a lot of time with your own thoughts, so despite the science fiction of it all, it is still a very personal record.”
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