Between The Buried And Me: "The prog community has gotten more comfortable with the extreme versions of that world"

There’s no doubt that Between The Buried And Me are a unique band. In fact, it’s quite an accomplishment the fact that they’ve become so big, taking into consideration how challenging their music has been since the beginning and the fact that they continue to push their limits eleven albums down the line.

"The Blue Nowhere" finds them uncompromising as ever, but it comes with a few changes. A change in the lineup of the band after 20 years, a new record label and a few musical twists and turns mark a new chapter in the career of BTBAM, as Tommy Rodgers explains in the lines below.

We discussed about the recent European tour, the critical role of "Colors" in their discography, the help of Mike Portnoy and Dream Theater back in the day, while Tommy tried to explain how they manage to put chaos in order when composing their music. And of course he told us everything we need to know regarding their brilliant brand new album, in a very interesting and enjoyable talk we had.

Hello Tommy! How are you?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm fine. Just a bit shocked…

What's wrong?

I just read the news about Brent Hinds of Mastodon... Don’t know if you read it too…

I did, yeah. I just saw it. It's absolutely insane. So sad.

Well, let's not focus on that. I’ll need time to digest that. So let's focus on the good news and on our interview, cause I'm very happy to have you here.

Thank you for having me.

How are you? Are you still jet lagged from getting back from Europe?

I'm doing pretty good today. Ιt was tough to get back, feeling normal. Mainly, because I landed my son started school the next day. So, I had to get right back into life. But all is well. And we got a tour coming up soon, so I don't have a lot of time to relax. But, it's all good. We got a new record coming out. Super excited for that to drop and everything.

In the last tour that recently ended in Europe, you played "Colors" in full, basically in every place you played. So, how was this tour for you?

It was really good. We had that set that we did the majority of the shows and then we had a greatest hits set that that we played in a lot of the fests. But yeah, it was a really good experience. It was cool. It's been quite a while since we've done festivals over there, like years and years and years. So, it was it was nice to dip our toes back into that. The fans were just amazing, especially in the headlining shows there was just such a good energy in the room every night. No complaints at all! We got to see a lot of old friends we haven't seen in a while. Some good bands we played with. So, all was all was good with the tour.

The US definitely is our strongest market. But we're trying to change that. That was one of the reasons we signed with Inside Out honestly!

Really, which market is stronger for you, the US or Europe? And which seems to be more expanding?

The US definitely is our strongest market. US and Canada. But we're trying to change that. That was one of the reasons we signed with Inside Out honestly! We've never really been on a label that that puts a whole lot of focus on the European markets, so we wanted to try that and see if it helps us gain some traction over there.

Yeah, I was going to ask you down the line about it. Because, Inside Out has been a powerhouse in the progressive music over the last 25 years or so. And I thought it was an inevitable to join forces with them at some point.

(laughs) Yeah... I mean, it's been a great fit. Obviously, it makes sense for the style of music we play and they have a great team. So far, the rollout for this new record’s been great. No complaints at all.

All right. Let's see how this plays out. Now back to the recent tour, you even played in Turkey for the first time…

Yeah!

So when will it be our time in Greece to watch Between The Buried And Me playing live here?

I know. We need to get over there, don't we? We’ve never played there. It was so cool being in Turkey and being in places that we've never been. Because we've been a band for so long. It's cool that there are so many places we haven't step foot on yet. So, yeah, hopefully Greece gets its debut at some point in the near future.

We had the tour outlined and promoters were like "Hey, we want you to play "Colors". We'll give you more money.". And we're like "OK"…

Another question is why you decided to play "Colors" in full in this recent tour. I mean, in two years from now, it turns twenty years old, so that would be a good reason to do an anniversary tour. So why now?

It was more of a promoter request rather than something we wanted to do. We had the tour outlined and promoters were like "Hey, we want you to play "Colors". We'll give you more money.". And we're like "OK"… (laughs)

Plain and simple…

Yeah! And the thing that's cool about "Colors" on our end is that we've played it so much, it's like in our DNA, there's not a whole lot of prep for it. It's something we can just pull out pretty quickly if we need so. And we've never done it over there. We were like "this is random"…. But it felt great every night. There was a lot of people that obviously that was like their gateway record, that's how they heard about us. So, there was a lot of pretty close connections people had with that music, so that was good to see.

With "Colors" that's where we started to get very comfortable in our writing dynamic and just how we want to present ourselves

Yeah, I understand it. Because as you said, it was a milestone record, a breakthrough album for you. Me, myself, I got to hear your name for the first time with the raving reviews that "Colors" was getting back in the day. So, would you say that this is up to now your most important work?

I would say certain records have a certain place in our arc, but I don't know... I feel like that's where we started to get very comfortable in our writing dynamic and just how we want to present ourselves. And that was the moment we really were like "Let's be ourselves! We don't care what the environment around us is like what other bands are doing. Let's just kind of do our thing". I think a lot of people really grasp on to that and liked that. We were taking chances musically and obviously we're still doing that after all these years and pushing ourselves even more with each record. So, yeah, I think it was an important record for us and how we operate and write music and with our fans as well.

Yeah, yeah… you do push your boundaries every time. I can confirm that. But for me, being a prog metal fan, the seal of approval came next year in 2008 when Mike Portnoy hand-picked you to open the Progressive Nation tour along with Dream Theater, Opeth and Three…

(laughs)

The Prog community has gotten a lot more comfortable with the more extreme versions of that world

So, how was this experience and how much did it help you along the way?

Like you said, I think that we gained a lot of new fans or at least gotten a lot of people's ears that wouldn't have heard of us because of that. We're very grateful for Mike and that recognition he gave us. It was a great tour. Obviously, we're fans of those bands and we grew up listening to those bands, so it was a definitely a surreal moment. Crowd wise, I would say - especially back then - I feel like the Prog community was a little less comfortable with the super aggressive stuff and blast beats and screaming and just the chaotic nature of our music. So, there were definitely moments on stage where I felt like everybody was looking at us like we're just out of our minds. But, I feel that tour would be a lot more comfortable now. I think that the Prog community has gotten a lot more comfortable with the more extreme versions of that world.

I remember seeing "Pull Me Under" on Headbanger’s Ball and it was like Queensrÿche, but even crazier!

I agree with that! But, really, have you have you been a fan of Dream Theater? Were they part of your musical vocabulary? I asked that because you come from a more extreme or maybe hardcore background…

I can only speak for myself… I mean, I know that some of the guys, like Dan for instance, that was like a huge band for him. For me, before I got into the extreme metal and hardcore stuff, I grew up with 80s metal. So naturally, their first record, I was always drawn to "Images And Words". Just because, I remember seeing "Pull Me Under" on Headbanger’s Ball and it was like "Oh, this is crazy!". It's like Queensrÿche, but even crazier!". So, I always, always love that record. And a few of their albums were super important to me, in my 20s maybe. I definitely think a lot of their work is very influential. They're a good band! They wrote some really cool albums and it's good to see bands like that still going strong and touring like they are and putting out the music. It's good to see…

So you'll understand that all this time I was building the bridge to talk about the new record, because about a month ago I had the chance to interview Mike Portnoy and I asked him about his favorite albums of 2025 so far. And he mentioned "The Blue Nowhere", cause obviously he had a promo copy. So I think that's a good start for the album to take the credits from Mike, isn't it?

I didn't know that! That's good to hear! Cool! (laughs)

It is! And it's been 4 years since "Colors II" was released, which is the largest gap between albums for you. Why did you need more time this time around?

Well, "Colors II"… that album drop was weird. It was during COVID, we wrote during COVID and it took a while to get things going again on the touring front. I would say most of the touring we had planned before we wrote had to get pushed back. So, we were playing catch up on a lot of things. And things are getting moved around because of the state of the world. So, by the time we got caught up on tours and felt we properly toured "Colors II" more time had passed. And then once we started writing. So, for us, it really didn't seem like it that. We didn't plan like "Oh, let’s put some more time between these albums". For us it's all about finding that natural sweet spot where we're like 100% ready to write, 100% ready to commit to being creative as a group and start working on new record. And that came a little later than normal because of those things.

OK. Anyway, based on how dense each of your works are usually, a four year gap between album seems more logical than two years that it actually takes you...

We're getting older. It's tough to just keep cranking these crazy ass records out every two years… (laughs)

I don’t believe that…. each of your albums has so much information that logically would do for three normal albums….

(laughs)

So, I'm pretty sure you’ll come back to your way of working, putting out a new album every two years. I think you have too much music inside you…

Yeah… (laughs)

People always talk about inspiration, but I think the biggest thing for us is one another. That's where we get so much inspiration from

"The Blue Nowhere" is as dense as always. So, I was wondering where does all this inspiration come from? And more even more, how do you manage to put this chaos in order every time? Do you work collectively trying to put this chaos in order? Or each one on his own, when you write and arrange the songs?

I'll try to walk you through a quick view how we work. It constantly changes, but normally we start with us individually writing on our own and we start sending ideas once we have a good chunk of music written. And from there you get an idea of where everybody's heads are, what kind of stuff they're writing. And normally there's something that jumps out like "Oh, this is a good point for us to all dive in. From this piece of music, maybe we can expand on that". From there it's just like a huge collaboration with the group. There's not a whole lot of dialogue, like actual us talking about it, like "Hey, where do we want to go with this?". It's more speak to each other in a weird way through music and sending ideas. And there's always someone working on something, even if it's not the same song. We're always trying to put our ideas via demo or like talking with one another. And before long, music just starts happening very quickly. We write very fast. People think this stuff takes a lot longer than it does, but for us… there's constant work getting it to a place where we feel the song is good, and then from there it's constant tweaking and editing. Like "How can we make this better? Where can we change things?". And then we get into the nuances which we really have grown to love over the last handful of years, like the sound design and like these little nuggets that when you put some records on headphones, you'll hear these little things. And then from there, once the music’s getting close to being done, that's when I start getting in my vocal brain and lyric brain and I start really trying to work all that and we start organizing the record to figure out how we want it to flow and all that.

It's a lot of work. It's something we love to do and I think you can hear that in our music. Especially, with this new record, when I hear it, it sounds to me like we're having fun. There's so much joy in the creative process for us. There was a lot of magic, man, with this album. People always talk about inspiration, but I think the biggest thing for us is one another. That's where we get so much inspiration from. I might write a 30 second guitar riff or something and I'll send it over and then from there someone might take that idea and expand it into something completely different or vice versa. You start with these little ideas and they can blossom into these huge ideas and you're constantly being surprised with things people are writing. And it's constantly feeding you with ideas to maybe expand on something they wrote. I think we all operate that way. And because of that, we end up with very dense, very long music.

When you look at it as one piece, it is a headache! I mean, it's so much!

That was pretty detailed and gives a glimpse to how you work, because all this information, it seems like a headache from the outside, how to deal with it…

(laughs) I think when you look at it as one piece, it is a headache! I mean, it's so much! But, when you're in the weeds and when you're working on things, you're only working on one… You're thinking in moments and little moment. And that's when I have to write vocals or lyrics. I can't ever look at it as a whole record because, I mean, I'll just instantly be overwhelmed, like "I can't do this. This is too much". But when I look at it in pieces or songs or just taking it slow – and because of how long we've been doing this - I think we have that confidence to know what we need to do to, to take baby steps to get to the final thing.

Yeah, I get it. Now this is your first album without Dustie in 20 years. How much did this affect the songwriting and the whole procedure of making the new album?

The songwriting was just as it it's always been. So, nothing was changed. As I was saying it great. Overall, the songwriting felt great and the recording process felt really great, so I would say it didn't affect it at all.

There's a lot of self-reflection and introspective, things that connect with the hotel. It's a place where you feel you're alone sometimes and there’s moments of loneliness and self-reflection involved

OK! So, what is "The Blue Nowhere"? What's the meaning behind the album title and the song title, of course?

Well, for, me the whole record is about the human experience and the idea that we're collectively always searching for something. We're searching for meaning, for happiness, for fulfillment… And finding this feeling that things are in a good place… I think that's something we're all constantly trying to find. And I tried to wrap that all up within the space of a hotel.

I love the history that hotels hold and all the different walks of life that come in and out. For me, it was just weird... I wrote it like journal entries through these different elements of human behavior and tried to weave this bizarre story as this person goes through life and is searching for something. There's a lot of self-reflection and introspective, things that connect with the hotel. It's a place where you feel you're alone sometimes and there’s moments of loneliness and self-reflection involved in being in these spaces. I wanted to hint on that and just create a story that wasn't super linear. I didn't want it to read like "Hey, this guy's doing this and then he's doing that". It’s more like trying to create these spaces where the music can live and I did that through each song living in a different place in a hotel environment.

So it is a concept album! Because I was reading in the press release that it was not a concept album and yet it has all these nuggets of a concept album. From repeating phrases and words like "Fever Dreams", "Marigold" in multiple songs and ending with saying about "Things We Tell Ourselves In The Dark"... And I was wondering how this is not a concept album?

Oh, it's 100% a concept record…

And it's not that you ever made a linear concept album...

Yeah, I think the press release worded it weird, where I think it was just saying it's not like a story. But it's 100%, a concept record for sure.

Now, I have to tell you that the title track is my favorite song on the album. It's so beautiful, melodic, and quite different for a typical Between The Buried And Me song. It could almost be heard on the radio...

(laughs)

The last two tracks feel like a grown up version of BTBAM

And along with "Beautifully Human", which is also great, you close the album on a very melodic note. Could you see yourselves focusing more on this side, even releasing an album full of such tracks, at some at some point?

I don't know. Something that I really loved about the record is how the flow it takes you to a very comfortable place at the end of the album, especially after so many intense tracks. "The Blue Nowhere", that song is one of my favorites as well. I think it feels like a grown up version of BTBAM. Those last two tracks… maybe in the future we do dive more into that, but I don't know… Like I was saying earlier, we like to see what naturally happens with us and if stuff like that just starts flowing out of us, then we'll go with it. But, yeah, that was a really fun track to work on, just because it was so different for us. But, for me, it's interesting because even though it is so very different, it still has the DNA of BTBAM. I think it still heavily sounds like us. Which is cool! And I would love to work on more stuff like that for sure.

Even the cover artwork has quite a different vibe from your previous ones. How does it connect with the music and the overall feeling of the album, in your opinion?

Well for me, you want to create some sort of mood that the art somehow connects with what's going on in the lyrics and the music. And this guy Corey Meyers, that we've been working with since I guess "Como Ecliptic", it was as simple as me sending my ideas, sending lyrics, my interpretation of what's going on in the record and themes that I think are important. And that was one of his first thoughts. And I loved it. We both felt for some reason that a white cover felt right. We wanted to stand out and feel different. I mean, it almost felt corporate in a way. We were trying to merge it being a story yet also being a hotel, we wanted to have some sort of branding. I think it's pretty interesting and I like that it's very different from other records.

It was nice to just have a very clean slate and really let it go and not really question it too much

As you said - and I agree 100% - it's a totally Between The Buried And Me recognizable album, but still it's a bit different and. Like, for the first time you have a horn and a string section that you used. But apart from that, what would you say is the element that it brings to your music and make it different in comparison to your previous albums. What separates it from your previous works?

It's tough to look at your own music like that. We try to not look in the rearview that much. Initially, one thing that really stood out to me when we were in the writing process is how each song really feels like in its own world. And I don't think we've really had a record that felt that way since maybe "The Great Misdirect". That was one of the reasons I really wanted to put it in a hotel is, because I was like "Oh, every song lives in a different space". Even though they are connected. It takes some pretty sharp turns. Yeah, it does feel different. I think we were maybe focusing on different elements of our writing and pushing ourselves individually in ways we maybe haven’t done before. I know me vocally, I definitely felt a little more confident and more adventurous with my writing, maybe due to the nature of the music. But, yeah, it was very freeing, during the writing process. I don't know if it was because it was after "Colors II", which was one of the few albums where we were looking in the rearview a little when writing. It was nice to just have a very clean slate and really let it go and not really question it too much. I think we achieved something pretty cool here.

Yeah, I think that you describe kind of a free spirit that you had, which me it shows in a song like "Absent Thereafter", which has rock and roll like feel in some of its parts…

(laughs)

…if you take them apart, you could be in a like playing in a Texas club and making people having a nice time. And then it would be a fun twist to get into the extreme stuff and see their reactions...

(laughs) Yeah, it's a fun tune for sure!

A lot of people think I painstakingly go through each line. But for me, I'm putting myself in some sort of headspace and then just letting it flow

There is one lyrics that definitely stood out for me. It says "Sit with yourself in silence. You can hear electricity", on "Psychomanteum". Can you elaborate a bit on this one please?

Oh man! I haven't dove into that line. I don't know, man... A lot of this stuff just comes out of me. What’s really different about this record compared to others is as we're releasing singles I'm still trying to understand what the lyrics are about. And it's changing weekly. I wrote in that way… for me the writing process was pretty simple. I gave myself a prompt, like "Today I want to write in this space", without any attention of what song it was going to be. And I just wrote for like 30 minutes. I didn't look at it for a while, didn't even question anything I wrote. And then later on I really dove into all this stuff I wrote and then tried to put it together like a puzzle. So, a lot of these things I wrote just popped out of my head and I'm still trying to analyze what the hell I'm talking about. A lot of people think I painstakingly go through each line and I’m like "OK, this line means this to me". But for me, I'm putting myself in some sort of headspace and then just letting it flow. And unfortunately, that song I haven't really dove into since recording it, so I really don't know… (laughs)

You explore it and you discover the meaning along with your fans...

Yeah, yeah. And I would say that's not normal. In the past there's definitely records that 100% this is happening. I wanted it to feel that way. And it's been fun. It's always fun with fans because they always have different interpretations than I originally had. I'm almost looking at it as a fan rather than the person that wrote it. Which is kind of interesting. Even for these first few tracks that we've released, new meaning comes up when I'm doing interviews and I’m really thinking about the lyrics and I’m like "Oh, this could maybe mean this and that". Where before I was just letting it flow and making it work. It’s hard to explain. It's a delicate dance that the lyrics and vocals tell these stories and be cohesive in some way.

How do you see now the experiment of separating "Automata" in two parts and two different albums?

I don't know... I'm glad with it. I like when we try new things. That's what kind of person I am. I like going for it and see if something works. I would say for the most part it seems the fans probably didn't love that. We wrote and recorded it as one piece. We originally planned on releasing it as one thing. But, after discussing with the label, we just thought it would be a better way to digest one of our records, because they are so dense and give people two moments to really dive into new music rather than one. Because, obviously this day and age, people's attention span is short… they go away pretty quick. But, looking back, I think it's a good idea still. People, they want the record and I get that. The kind of band we are people they want the full thing. I doubt we'll do that again. I wouldn't say there was any really benefits that I saw, but at the same time, I don't think it really hurt the record. People still enjoyed that music. For me it's just one record, it's just "Automata"…

Why would we cover a song and make it sound like a cover of that song?

Last question. Earlier today I saw that you covered Nine Inch Nails’ "Hurt" for an upcoming album tribute album for "The Downward Spiral". Why did you choose this iconic track and what Nine Inch Nails and this album mean to you?

It's one of my favorite records of all time probably. Nine Inch Nails have been such a huge part of my musical life. "Pretty Hate Machine" is still one of the all-time greatest. It’s just a phenomenal band all around.

We were asked to do this. We recorded this like August of 2024 or something… It was forever ago, so it's cool to finally be talking about it. We had a few other choices that we wanted to do, but other bands already had those tracks. I can't remember which ones they were. We knew "Hurt" was the risky song, the one maybe people didn't want to touch. And we wanted to put our BTBAM touch, we wanted to put it in our world and see what happened. I think it came out really cool. It's a really dark song and noisy song, and those work to our advantage. I think people are going to dig it. It's cool. And it's not going to sound like Johnny Cash!

(laughs)

I keep seeing people writing on the Internet and I'm like "Why would we cover a song and make it sound like a cover of that song?" (laughs)