Between The Buried & Me COMA ECLIPTIC

Integration and expansion have always been the trademarks of North Carolina's Between the Buried & Me. This lineup, which has been together since the early 2000s, has leaned ever more toward prog with each successive release since 2007's Colors, and seemingly culminated in the two-chapter Parallax releases in 2011 and 2012. Those records utilized not only the math rock and technical death metal from the band's history, but also touched on jazz rock in a meld of sophisticated musical compositions. Coma Ecliptic is a concept album that "follows the wanderings of an unidentified man, stuck in a coma, as he journeys through his past lives...he enters each world and is offered a choice: stay, or move on to the next in search of something better, something more 'perfect'." The m.o. may be ambitious, but this is easily the most musically accessible record BTB&M have ever released. There is a conscious attempt to gather all of their various identities and at least engage (if not embrac