The Parallex: Hypersleep Dialogues

New Between the Buried and Me is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your going to get. However, in BTBAM's case, that is never a bad thing. As every fan should know by now, BTBAM is one of the best progressive metal bands out there today.

This album is also a conceptual piece,"The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues serves as the first installment of a two-part story. Hypersleep introduces two human characters who live in different planes of existence, separated by millions of light years. We find that each of them is confronted with similar personal issues that they need to reckon with. Both characters make decisions that will change their lives, and perhaps the course of the universe, forever. The follow up album will pick up the story with our two main characters, with the help of near light speed travel, meeting each other and realizing together their purpose in the universe." Yeah, pretty trippy. But the band pulls it off with flying colors. Now for the actual music (finally!)

The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues continues on the BTBAM path to more progressive territory. This is BTBAM's first EP, but in name only. 3 songs, 30 minutes.

First and foremost, we have "Specular Reflection." The longest song on the album, it is also the most interesting. Beginning with a very Symphony X like intro, it blast into typical BTBAM about a minute in. There are two things that you'll notice with this song. One, Tommy Rogers voice is better than it ever was, especially his clean vocals. Two, this song will draw a lot of comparisons with "Swim to the Moon", which is a fair comparison. However, this song maintains much more focus than that one. "Swim to the Moon", while a great song, was victim to Dream Theater like noodling, which tends to get tedious and boring. "Specular Reflection" is a more focused and coherent "Swim to the Moon".

Second, we have "Augment of Rebirth". After the "Ants of the Sky" like intro, we blast into a flurry of riffs and blast beats that is expected of them. However, it is not Between the Buried and Me unless they threw something totally weird and unexpected at us. And they do when about halfway through the song, slide guitar is introduced and you can here farm animals in the background. If that doesn't get you going, "WTF?!", I don't know what will. However, this is the worst song on the album. That doesn't mean that this is bad song. This is just victim to being on an album with two other near flawless songs.

Finally, we have the best song on the album, "Lunar Wilderness". This song builds up with jazz and progressive rock, then goes into riff city. I won't give to much away, but if I had to pick a comparison song, I'd have to pick, "Selkies: The Endless Obsession."

Individual performances are great on this one. I've already mentioned Tommy Rogers, but the others is what keeps the album together. Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring are great guitarists and I won't be surprised to see them mentioned as some of the greastest players of their time. Dan Briggs plays more of a part on this album due in part to the great production by David Bottril. You can actually hear the bass, and the Keyboards! Blake Richardson... enough said.

"The Parallax", while not flawless, is a great addition to the BTBAM discography. The second song brings it down a bit, but not to the point where it makes this any less of a great album. With more focused and coherent songwriting, BTBAM have proven that they can write a song with structure, but still keep it experimental. Look for this in most year-end best-of lists, because that's where it belongs. A slight misstep with "Augment of Rebirth", but BTBAM have done it again, and I can't give this anything less than a great score. FINAL TALLY:
4.5/5

The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues is ok, but not BTBAM's best. It goes a bit too far into one direction, while leaving out something that brought past albums brilliantly together. That is a beautiful mix of technical brutality that builds into amazing melodic cathchiness. For this album, BTBAM brings the complicated math technicallity, but never comes to a true coherent theme/style (save the first track), at least not in the sense of an album like Colors, which is their best and one of my top albums of all time.

This album comes very close to being great, but the overall feeling, after listening through the whole album, is that there is something missing that didn't put it quite over the top. As far as it seems, it is what I mentioned earlier. Overall 3 1/2 stars. Of course, if this was the first BTBAM album I heard I would probably rank it about 1/2 star higher. With all of that said, it is not a bad album at all. These musicians are some of the best on earth. I often wonder how they remember and distinguish such complicated rhythms. As with all BTBAM albums be sure to listen to this with a high quality stereo system, with clear (not laid back) speakers.

I appreciate Btbam for always trying to progress their songwriting and for their extremely good musicianship. With that being said I don't think this is their best work. Colors was a whirlwind of well written riffs and curveball song structures. The Great Misdirect was a more mature effort with well crafted songs. The Hypersleep Dialogues sits somewhere in between. The opening song "Specular Reflection" will definitely make any hardcore Btbam fan jump for joy and might have been strong enough to be released as a single. Saving the other 2 songs for part 2 of The Parallax story. Not their best release but I rather like them releasing music in this format as opposed to the "album>2yr tour>"album time frame. I will definitely go see them live when they come around to southern california.

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