Having previously been able to speak to Between The Buried And Me mastermind on the eve of their brand new album Coma Ecliptic we were lucky enough to speak to Dan yet again. Delving deeper into the process of Coma Ecliptic and what elements the band employ to create a record of such grandeur we sat down with the bassist on their recent London date prior to their pitch perfect show. Turn on the “Node” and step into “The Coma Machine”…
I’ve noticed in previous albums and also on Coma Ecliptic, there’s kind of a narrative within the instruments. So a particular harmony on Foamborn starts off on the keys and then it ends finally with White Walls. Was that something that you’ve always had a kind of Easter egg?
Yeah! I think that was the thing that I took away early on when I started really liking the concept album format. With like Scenes From A Memory by Dream Theater, shit even Darkside Of The Moon the first four tracks or so really just recycle a couple of musical themes but they’re all different. You know what I mean? They kind of take this familiar theme, you hear it in Breathe and then you hear it a couple of songs later it’s just presented just a little bit differently, different lyrics, a different tone your ear recognises it but not quite as something new, something familiar.
That was a fun thing to do on Colors and that was the first time that we experimented with using themes throughout a record. And yes on this one, on Coma when it ends the piano part is technically “The Coma Machine” then the second half of the song, it’s also from Coma Machine. I think that when I wrote that section, the really minor sounding section in coma machine, I had feeling it was going to end the album just because it seemed like a big theme. It seemed like something that we could put a guitar solo over and Tommy wrote a really powerful vocal passage over it it just seemed to be a cool thing to bounce off of.
It’s something that is just in the back of your mind when you’re writing the album and there are some natural spots where all of a sudden your hand just falls into that riff and you’re just like “Oh shit!” It’s a cool moment when you’re like “Oh my god, it’s the same tempo, it’s the same key, it worked! Hahaha”. It happens like that and throughout an album writing session you all just kind of get onto the same page. Whereas you started off in all these different worlds and by the time you’re through everything you write makes sense. It just happens, you kind sync up.
According to Jamie King on the DVD there’s a dinosaur sound in “Turn On The Darkness”?
The very beginning yeah! You would have had to be really listening for it, I think it’s right before the vocals come in, it almost sounds like the monster on Lost. It sounds kind of like a real low grumble, kind of like a growl, but yeah it’s a dinosaur sound that Jamie found!
You can of course listen to the full interview below on our Soundcloud where Dan tells us more to do with the band’s brand new phenomenal album.
Coma Ecliptic is out now via Metal Blade.
