Interviews : Between The Buried And Me (Tommy Rogers) – 03/11/2009

Perhaps one of the most progressive and interesting bands to explode in the metal/metalcore scene lately, Between The Buried And Me have just unleashed their new album ‘The Great Misdirect’ and will be hitting our shores in March 2010. I had the pleasure of chatting with vocalist and keyboardist Tommy Rogers about everything new in the band…

Metal Obsession: The new album is perhaps even more experimental than it’s predecessor, with the overall flow being sacrificed a bit. Was it a conscious decision to experiment more or was that just how it developed naturally?

Tommy Rogers: It’s definitely just how it developed on its own. When we write, all five of us write, and when you have five brains working on one song, that’s the way it turns out. We all each have very unique writing styles and we’re all influenced by shitloads of music. I mean, even we never know what to expect when we’re writing. This record just came out with so many more dynamics than anything else we’ve done and I’m really pumped about that.

MO: What other styles influence you personally?

TR: Man that’s a tough one. I wouldn’t be able to list them. I listen to everything; jazz, rock, classical, bluegrass, death metal, black metal. I mean I’ve always been a big metalhead since I was young so that’s definitely my number one influence and always has but I just love all kinds of music. I think regardless of whether it’s a direct influence all music influences you in some way. I think it shows in each record that we’re very open to trying new things and as musicians that’s very rewarding. When you’re writing it’s nice to have that feeling that you can just show the other guys any of your ideas without being scared that they’re just going to push it away. Obviously if it’s something that doesn’t work in the song then it doesn’t work in the song. Experimentation is certainly good but we don’t want to force any, we want it to be natural. When bands try to be weird for the sake of being weird, it shows. But we try to keep things flowing and stuff fits into the song structures, and I think this album does that. It flows, and takes you on a lot of ups and downs, and I think it’s a fun listen because of that.

MO: Do all five of you write together and throw ideas at each other, or do you tend to focus more on writing your own instruments and parts?

TR: Well pretty much all of us play guitar, so we all write on guitar and just sort of work on everything. Except Blake writes all of his drums, none of us write any drum parts. But yeah, I play guitar and our bassist Dan’s a really good guitarist so we have a lot of minds working together.

MO: Do you find that being in such a progressive and creative band makes it, generally, harder or easier to develop new material? Obviously you enjoy the lack of borders…

TR: Well individually we all just like to push ourselves and not write things that sound exactly like something we’ve done before. So we all really like that, to push ourselves, and to keep progressing from one record to another. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. From day one when we started the band, that was our one goal; to just always progress and never be afraid to try new things. It’s not just whatever is cool at the moment, we’ve just always wanted to be our own band and write what makes us happy. “Fossil Genera” turned out to be probably my favourite track on the album.

MO: Do you ever worry that too much progression and experimentation could actually turn fans off the band?

TR: Well that’s definitely the case with a lot of people but that’s just one of things we have to expect. We just have to write what we think is the best we can. With every band, there are going to be people who don’t like it, and we expect that. We’re extremely grateful at how many people actually like what we do.

MO: Colors was almost universally praised, and rightfully so. Has the new album had the same sort of response or have you found people harder to ‘please’, for the lack of a better word, after such a well recieved album?

TR: The response so far has been amazing. It hasn’t been out long, I think it came out Tuesday, but it’s been awesome. Our fans have been great. We really didn’t know what to expect.There’s stuff on the album that we haven’t tried before and people seem to enjoy it. I think if we had just thrown out another album like Colors people would have been disappointed that it wasn’t something new to listen to. We always want to take our fans to different places, but we’ll always be a very heavy band. But yeah, it’s been awesome.

MO: Were any of the band a bit more anxious or cautious going into this album than the last?

TR: It was really natural, everything went really smooth for this record. This is the first album where the writing and recording just went perfectly, with no kinks at all. There were no technical difficulties in the studio, which is unheard of. Everything just flowed really well and it was a great experience. Hopefully the next one is as smooth too.

MO: You’ve stuck with the same producer for a while, without much change in overall sound recently. Do you think that might change in the near-ish future or are you really happy to keep with your current sound?

TR: He’s our dude, we’ve been using him for years. He’s right down the street from us and he really understands what we want to do with our music. He has a really good grasp on music in general and he’s a great musician. We’ve talked about it but it’s just one of those things; we can’t imagine doing it with anybody else. It feels like home when we’re recording with him.

MO: Do you guys have much input or is it left to him?

TR: Yeah we have all kinds of input. He’s always open to any ideas. He wants to make the record sound how we want it to sound. He’s so easy to work with like that, and it’s one of the greatest things about him. We’ve been working with him for 7 years now. We’ve both come a long way. He started out of his parents’ basement, just like we did. So it’s been awesome to move along together.

MO: Being such complex albums that are constantly progressing, they aren’t exactly the easiest to explain. How would you summarize a BTBAM album in a few sentences?

TR: [laughs] I think that’s the hardest thing, I’ll just leave that up to the press! Well, when all is said and done we’re a metal band, but with so much more going on. It’s different for each song, but I’d just say we’re an experimental metal band I guess. But yeah, that’s a good question. Umm, uhh, I dunno, I don’t think we’ll ever have an answer for that. [laughs]

MO: You’re heading down to Australia next March for a headlining tour, which is fantastic because I missed your last Aussie visit. How are you balancing your set lists on your upcoming tours, is it focusing mostly on the last few albums or are you including older tracks as well?

TR: I don’t know what our set lists will be like that far ahead, we really haven’t thought about it. We’ll probably mix it up, it definitely won’t be entirely new stuff. In the US we’re trying to do stuff from every album. We’re really excited to get back to Australia, it’s definitely one of my all-time favourite places to play. Our last tour there was awesome.

MO: What new tracks have been played live so far?

TR: We’ve played “Obsfucation” and “Disease, Injury, Madness” already. This weekend will be the first time we’ll play the whole album. We’re doing a CD release show so we’re playing it from start to finish. I don’t think we’re going to tour doing it though, it’s just for this one show. The new material is going over really well live though. We’re really excited

MO: Any particular Australian bands you would love to have support your tour?

TR: In Trenches are great, they’re good friends of ours. That band is awesome. Umm, that’s really the only band we know over there, except Silverchair. We’ll tour with Silverchair, we’ll get them to support. [laughs]

MO: What are the bands plans for the near future? Focusing solely on touring?

TR: We’re doing one tour in November, and then starting a world tour in January. We’re just going to tour all next year, see what happens with this record, play as well as we can, and then start writing again when the time is right.

MO: To finish off, any suggestions for people album-wise in 2009?

TR: It’s been a good year so far. The new Mars Volta was good, I saw them live last week actually. I’m a big fan of the new Muse. I can’t think, I wish I had my iTunes in front of me. The new Red Chord is awesome, and the new Converge. The new Mew is really good. I heard Silverchair are recording so I’m really excited to hear that, I’ve been a huge fan of their last few.

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You can have a listen to the band at http://www.myspace.com/betweentheburiedandme