A rock opera — the most melodic album they ever made. Coma Ecliptic is the seventh album by Between the Buried and Me, announced by the band themselves as a rock opera, and the record where they moved furthest from metal and closest to classic progressive rock.

The short version

The seventh studio album by the North Carolina band Between the Buried and Me, released in July 2015 on Metal Blade Records; eleven tracks, around sixty-nine minutes. It is a full concept album, following a nameless character who drifts through a series of imagined past lives and must decide in each whether to stay or move on. Musically it dials back the death metal in favour of melody, keyboards and song structure, with clear debts to Queen, Pink Floyd, Rush and King Crimson. Cleanly produced and warmly mixed by Jens Bogren, it is their most accessible album, and a divisive one.

Writing a rock opera

The band announced the project on social media in September 2014 with a single word: rock opera. What followed was their most theatrical record, built around a story rather than a mood. A nameless man travels through a succession of invented past lives, each track presenting a different world, and in each he must choose whether to remain or move on in search of something better. The resolution is surprisingly warm: when he finally comes round, he understands that those other lives were only dreams, and that the life he had been searching for was the ordinary waking one all along. Producer Jamie King, with the band since the debut, recorded the album, but the mixing and mastering went to the Swedish engineer Jens Bogren, whose thick, warm sound is one of the most commented-on things about it.

The sound

Melodic, theatrical progressive rock with metal in its bones rather than at its surface. Tommy Rogers sings far more than he screams here, and his keyboards are pushed forward, giving the album a lush, synth-heavy texture closer to the 1970s and 1980s than to the technical death metal the band came from. Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring still deal in dissonant, choppy technical passages, but they now sit between sunny vocal harmonies, acoustic guitar, piano and a guest cello, and the heavy moments arrive as dramatic punctuation rather than as the default. Structures are more conventional too, with recognisable choruses and hooks. Jens Bogren’s mix is thick, warm and modern while keeping an older prog aesthetic, and it makes the whole record sound more expansive than anything they had done before.

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The songs

Node opens gently, as their albums often do, before The Coma Machine arrives as the album’s calling card and the track most listeners name first: strong, distinct sections building to a far greater whole, with Tommy Rogers alternating clean singing and screams. King Redeem and Queen Serene is the other frequently cited highlight, developing beautifully from acoustic guitar, piano and delicate electric harmonics into a heavier centre. Turn on the Darkness swings dynamically between melody and force, while Famine Wolf blends choppy technical metal with bright vocal harmonies. The centrepiece is Memory Palace, the first single and at just under ten minutes the longest track, juggling every style the band works in. Life in Velvet closes on piano.

Reception and legacy

Coma Ecliptic was generally well received and remains one of the band’s most divisive albums. Admirers praise the songwriting, the ambition of the concept, Jens Bogren’s production and the strength of The Coma Machine, King Redeem and Queen Serene and Memory Palace, hearing a band evolving intelligently rather than repeating itself. Critics counter that it is safer and more polished than the records that made their name, that seventy minutes is a lot to ask, and that some of the magic of Colors is missing in the move toward accessibility. For newcomers it is often the easiest way in, and for the band it marked a lasting shift, opening the more melodic, prog-rock-leaning path they would follow afterwards.

The verdict

A melodic, theatrical, unusually accessible album, and the boldest change of direction Between the Buried and Me ever made — a full rock opera built on singing, keyboards and song structure, with the metal held in reserve. Come to it for The Coma Machine, the graceful King Redeem and Queen Serene and the sprawling Memory Palace, rather than for the ferocity of their earlier work. A good entry point if the heavier albums feel daunting. From here, Colors for the masterpiece, and Colors II for the later return to form. A brave, rewarding detour.

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