★★★★
Coma Ecliptic, complete with its nominative inversion, is mind-boggingly unfathomable; it’s like watching a cartoon drawn live right in front of your ears. Tumbling over in its complexities like a Christopher Nolan film, the greatest part of this record is its brilliant ambition.
As with all other progressive-something albums, time signature, key and genre changes abound. Running for over an hour in total, most tracks last between six and eight minutes, except for the almost ten-minute-long ‘Memory Palace’, an Augustus-like ‘first amongst equals’ standout if there ever was one.
In fact, that’s probably this album’s one major drawback. There are no eminently memorable songs or catchy segments on the record. The fact the concept for the album fails to pique interest doesn’t help either.
However, unlike previous efforts from this band, there are no big, obvious set pieces it’s building towards; those that incline the listener to fast-forward to hear immediately.
The real accomplishment here is that Between The Buried And Me have sewn it all into a seamlessly cohesive and impressively grandiose progressive rock opera experience.
Coma Ecliptic by Between The Buried And Me is available through Metal Blade.
