Grayslake natives Buried by the Ocean are a progressive metal/hardcore group of four with the simple goal of making the best music they can and having a good time. Two years in the making, with drummer Chris George, bassist Mike Piontek, and guitarists Eugene Kamlyuk and Tyler Dennen, the band first “did lots of covers and were really bad”. After a few months and some line up changes with a number of vocalists, the band found current front man Kody Adams and finally felt they clicked. Recently the Buried By The Ocean posted a few new tracks to their myspace, and Reviewsic headed over to take a listen.
The first song we come across on the playlist is Witness The End, a song described by the band as being “more or less about greedy, two faced people who become blinded by opportunity.” The song starts out with manic, flight-of-the-bumblebee-esque guitar and what sounds like an organ or some equivalent digital impersonator, which we liked. However, right off the bat it’s apparent that this song is full of separate entities that just aren’t fusing together. The organ makes another appearance but seems misplaced along the panicked guitars and three-layer deep pattern of vocals that honestly just lack structure. It all cleans up around 2:30, even getting a good As Cities Burn vibe with some speaking parts, echo-ey guitar, and a chorus of chanting in the background. But it loses us again around 3:45 as the instrumentals get slightly repetitive and some kind of mysterious banging takes place. The best way to describe it is to say it sounded as if someone on a movie set had dropped the boom.
Boundries, the next on their myspace player, is “a song basically about living life on a routine, and how you should not live your life based on how the rest of the world does, and you shouldn’t just believe the things you are told.”
We liked this song the most out of the three, for its haunting piano and guitar intro, the way the rest of the band enters the song bit by bit, as if they were unveiling something, and how the vocals just punch right through the curtain of false calm the song puts up. We would like a little more variation in the instrumentals, because here is a shining example of the monotony metal can become if musicians aren’t careful. There’s a great piano and guitar break at 2:50 that is definitely it’s saving grace, and we see a much more put together vocal pattern in Boundries than in any other of Buried By The Ocean’s songs. Our one complaint is about the guttural growls placed underneath the main vocal track, that we feel are simply in excess.
Hard to Breath is the final song up for play online, but unfortunately comes across as tossed together, the individual parts not really melding with one another. Adams’ vocals come off weak, the bass line needs to be turned up so we can catch more than just a hint of it, and there is another inexplicable explosion mid-song.
All in all Buried By The Ocean is a good start, and it’s obvious their hardcore hearts in the right place. With a little tweaking in post-production and some more attention to detail we feel this band could make some solid sounds.
www.myspace.com/buriedbytheoceanband
Tags: Artist Review, Local Music
