About six foot?
Between the Buried and Me hail from North Carolina and are probably one of the most eclectic and interesting bands that we come across at Download all weekend. Hailed as progressive metal core they move between a full on hardcore assault and really epic, progressive moments. Admittedly it takes a while to get into it but once you do it really does work well.
The growling hardcore vocals of Tommy Rogers are not exactly easy on the ear and if they were a pure hardcore band I’d probably have had enough after the first ten minutes! Rogers gives an energetic performance, whilst behind him the band presents a chaotic but clearly well organised wall of metal. They are certainly a tight band and they need to be to get away with the shifts in pace that they throw in at seemingly random intervals.
The odd keyboard part from Rogers breaks things up nicely and adds some nice dynamics early on, as does some tidy clean guitar work from Paul Waggoner. When they move into the progressive moments they don’t just dip their toe in the water, they get in the boat and set sail for a good few minutes! At times they produce really mainstream sounding prog rock with some huge chord changes and sounding like a total juxtaposition to their usual hardcore.
They finish with a blistering rampage of a song and get a huge reaction form the assembled crowd. Between the Buried and Me have really impressed today and bring a welcome injection of variety to an overpopulated hardcore scene.