By Matt Lewis
Toronto. Opera House. Thursday. Three bands. Between The Buried And Me, Job For A Cowboy, The Ocean. One of these is not like the others.
A sold out show and a mix of scene kids, the occasional metal dude and steroid filled hardcore fans descended on a cool April night to the Opera House. A day before we celebrate the death and resurrection of a fictional messiah, character, god and children’s fairy tale, The Ocean started the affair with their prog sci metal symphony. Opening with the title track from their latest record Anthropocentric the band started off with high energy and while the music ebbed and flowed they never lost the crowd through their shortened set of 35 minutes. Playing mostly tracks from the last two records and one song from Precambrian, they ended with the epic “Origin of Species/Origin of God”. It seemed oh so short but incredibly sweet. The juiced up hardcore kids sporting there Job For A Cowboy shirts looked befuddled to say the least.
Next up was the odd man out. Job For a Cowboy whipped up the adrenaline and got fists throwing. Their take on deathcore is nothing short of yawn. It is what it is. Their brand of death metal fused with hardcore and technical aspects is no better or no worse than the gluttonous amount of other bands filling up the genre. They really broke up the flow that The Ocean started that would have climaxed with Between Buried The Buried And Me.
Between The Buried And Me were up next to finish the night. They opened with the tracks from their latest EP, Parallax Hyper Sleep, which is great by the way. Every time I’ve seen The Buried And Me since Colors, when the song writing took a turn for the longer composition its always seemed like a chore to watch them. While they play the music flawlessly as they always have it seems like it should be a sit down type of show. While the music is always great on disc – Colors was downright amazing for some reason it doesn’t translate as well in a live setting. The shorter songs from Alaska always translate live, like they should but the longer songs have too many interludes and cant keep my attention for very long.
Short story even shorter, The Ocean ruled the night, Job For A Cowboy was on the wrong show and BTBAM were technically flawless but the band became a victim of their own songwriting.
