Given the regurgitative, mash-up culture of the modern age, Between the Buried and Me’s passionate ethos of cross-pollination should have no trouble turning heads. And yet Coma Ecliptic’s conceptual sprawl is so ingenious and bursting with colour that it often feels too potent, too enthralling, to belong amid the empty, transient squall of the present day. From the rock opera crescendos of the opening Node onwards, the album dares to be both a quintessentially prog-rock experience and a timely act of modern metal derring-do. Frontman Tommy Rogers’ effortless versatility has at last found songs worthy of his gifts – he’s a blur of conflicting spirits on The Coma Machine, a demented ringleader on the lysergic goof-out of The Ectopic Stroll – while his bandmates’ virtuosic blending of everything from Dream Theater-like technicality to psychedelic wooziness worthy of Cardiacs creates a sustained barrage of jaw-dropping moments.
