WHOA! // Between the Buried and Me - Selkies: The Endless Obsession // Composer Reaction & Analysis 

I still remember my buddy sitting me down and telling me "you're gonna like this" as we listened to it on his ps3 visualizer.

One of my favourite songs of all time. The final few minutes are just sublime.

Always good to see more BTBAM on the channel!! My brother got this album and showed it to me when it came out. As a freshman in highschool, this album was EXTREMELY influential in my music journey and my next 4 years. Especially getting Colors after this album. Alaska is still and always will be my favorite album by them. It brings back so many intense memories growing up and those crucial years in my social evolution. This is the first album where Tommy Rogers, the vocalist, does cleans and experimentation with his vocals. It paid off so well. This is also the first album with their second drummer, Blake Richardson.

The climax of this song always reminded me of Opeth's Bleak. both of the Climaxes of those songs are goosebump inducing

I don't know why, but the last minute and a half always brings a tear to my eye. With regards to the 'disjointedness,' I, usually, see Between the Buried and Me as being a band that writes in movements. The over-arching storyline in the first few albums went through highs and lows and I think, the most effective way to explore different character arcs (and voices) and stories and BTBAM have done this so well, in my opinion. And with regards to who influenced who; a big narrative in progressive bands is that they listen to all kinds of music and nothing is shunned. That and their musical acumen makes for unique sounds.

The true power of this song comes not within the song itself, but rather with where the song sits in the album. The three preceding tracks are heavy as balls, and the track that follows Selkies is a string-only instrumental interlude. Both of which extend the tonal shift of Selkies well beyond the confines of the solitary track. This genius is what we all began to notice at this point in time. A genius they would later expand on Colors and beyond. 🤘

"Mordecai" on their album before Alaska was a good precursor for this song. It also had the heavy start but ended with melodic clean vocals but it was a more raw sound compared to Selkies

Hey Bryan, don't sleep on these incredible endings.... Opeth - Harlequin Forest Pantera - Floods Gordian Knot - Rivers Dancing Misery Signals - Five Years Isis - Garden of Light Avenged Sevenfold - Sidewinder Black Sabbath - Symptom of the Universe Scale the Summit - Atlas Novus Dream Theater - Learning To Live Faith No More - Just a Man Orphaned Land - Birth of the Three Pearl Jam - Alive A Perfect Circle - The Noose Smashing Pumpkins - Soma Devin Townsend - Deadhead Live - White Discussion

I found this song on an old metal blade/Sumerian sampler cd in 2005 and I’ve been hooked ever since. These guys changed the way I thought about composition and songwriting in general. Alaska will forever be a top 10 album for me.

This was the song that introduced me to BTBAM when it came out in 2005. I heard it on satellite radio and couldn't get enough of it.

My favourite guitar solo of all time

This song was a staple of their live shows for a long time. Really fucking good sets!

It's arguably their most popular song, and man do they not like playing it lmao Not cause they dislike the song but because they've played it SOO many times haha

One of the defining traits of BTBAM is that their guitars are tuned to C# standard. They, like me, don't use drop tunings, pretty much everything is in C# standard except for a few acoustic songs like Laser Speed at the end of the album. Favorite band of all time, and this is probably my favorite song of all time.

12:26 I've transcribed pretty much all of BTBAMs discography so I can actually tell you the time-signatures and tempos for the song. BPM = 170 (A) Intro (Bars 1-4): Synth Section (7/8) (B) Riff A (Bars 5-12): Bars 5-10 are in (7/8) and bars 11-12 are in (4/4) (C) Riff B (Bars 13-16): Bar 13 (7/8) Bar 14 (3/4) Bars 15 and 16 (7/8) (D) Riff A (Bars 17-24): Bars 17 to 22 are 7/8 and bars 23-24 are (4/4) (E) Riff B (Bars 25-40): Bar 25 (7/8) Bar 26 (3/4) Bar 27 (7/8) Bar 28 (4/4) Bar 29 (7/8) Bar 30 (3/4) Bar 31 (7/8) Bar 32 (3/4) Bar 33 (7/8) Bar 34 (3/4) Bar 35 (7/8) Bar 36 (3/4) Bar 37 (7/8) Bar 38 (3/4) Bar 39 (7/8) Bar 40 (4/4) (F) Riff C (Bars 41-60): Bar 41 (9/8) Bar 42 (5/8) Bars 43-50 (7/8) Bar 51 (4/4) Bars 52-60 (7/8) (G) Transition A (Bars 61-81): Bars 61-63 (7/8) Bars 64-81 (4/4) (H) Transition B (Bars 82-85): Bars 82-85 (4/4) and tempo change to 190 on Bar 82. (I) Riff E (Bars 86-102): Bars 86-93 (4/4) Bar 94 (2/4) Bars 95 to 102 (4/4) (J) Transition C (Bars 103-114): Bar 103 (4/4) Bars 104-106 (2/4) (Tempo change to 140 on Bar 105) Bars 107-114 (4/4) (K) Transition D (Bar 115): (4/4) (L) Riff G (Bars 116-122): (4/4) (M) Transition E (Bar 12): (4/4) (N) Riff H (Bars 124-129): Bars 124-125 (4/4) Bar 126 (7/4) Bars 127-128 (4/4) Bar 129 (5/4) (O) Riff I (Bars 130-137): (4/4) (P) Transition F (Bar 138): (7/4) (Q) Riff J (Bars 139-153): (3/4) (R) Transition G (Bars 154-156) Bars 154-155 (2/4) Bar 156 (5/8) Tempo is gradually increased from 130-170 from bars 156-157 (S) Riff B (Bars 157-167): Bars 157-163 (7/8) Bars 164-166 (4/4) (T) Piano Offset (Bars 167-170) Tempo change to 100bpm at bar 167 (U) Acoustic Flow (Bars 171-174): (4/4) (V) Acoustic Jazz Medley (Bars 175-190): (4/4) (W) Jazz Solo (Bars 191-202): (4/4) (X) Jazz Transition (Bars 203-206): (4/4) (Y) Riff K (Bars 107-214): (4/4) (Z) Pre-Solo Transition (Bars 215-218): (4/4) (A') Pre-Solo Harmonizing (Bars 219-234): (4/4) (B') Sweep Solo (Bars 235-242): (4/4) (C') Outro (Bars 243-258): (4/4) Hope this helps!

Always great to see more of my favorite band on the channel that I didn’t request 😁. As for influences, they have an album called The Anatomy Of, which includes covers of Sepultura, Metallica, Blind Melon, Motley Crue, Queen, King Crimson, Soundgarden, Faith No More, Pantera, Pink Floyd, Depache Mode, Earth Crisis, The Smashing Pumpkins and Counting Crows. This is also on Wikipedia. This may explain why they can be heard as being all over the place at times. This may also explain why they are my favorite band of all time since I was introduced to Colors in 2010. I fell in love with The Great Misdirect though initially that year, then went back to Colors, then to Alaska. I just simply love everything they have done. Side note: I was also listening to The Human Abstract on repeat around the same time I discovered BTBAM, although I was late lol, then they just fell off but are still one of my favorites.

Great track! Great band! Great analysis! Glad you liked it 😊

The face says it all we all had that same face after our first listen to this track

Selkies is one of my favorites. And cemetery gates

Amazing outro, great reaction and analysis. Melodic BTBAM is my favorite side of their music too.

This song taught a generation of kids how to sweep pick

This was mine and probably a good amount of peoples first exposure to BTBAM. I was a sophmore in high school and was just slowly getting into metal and I heard this song and was so hooked. They just sounded so different. I've been a fan since. They're my favorite band hands down. You should really just react to the Alaska album. I love watching you react to BTBAM.

Their moments of beauty

Protest the Hero was my favorite metalcore at this time. Kezia was a masterpiece. Human Abstract was a close second to that for me. But BTBAM fell more in a heavy class for me. So I never really lumped them together.

One of the most beautiful songs ever written

It's definitely a vibe

Saw this live on the Alaska tour. Closed with it. Didnt play the outro "solo" the second/maybe studio-delayed part. They were so tight.

The guitarist arpeggios like a Moog. ❤

"2005 welcome to perfection." Anyone?

I believe you reacted to Backwards Marathon off this album before? Either way, awesome stuff, more BTBAM is always appreciated.

I think this is where BTBAM really started to hit their stride. You can still hear the strong Dream Theater influence in the beginning, a Meshuggah section, a melodeath section.... but they are really starting to cook with a lot of their own unique ingredients too, especially with the more melodic sections. I think they'd hit their peak just after this, but Alaska is a hell of an album and this track reminds me that I really need to do another discography run for them. As far as the "inspiration train," you can trace all progressive popular music back to The Beatles. Their innovations in psychedelic rock evolved shortly after into 70s prog. If we go forward to Dream Theater they were taking a lot of inspiration from Rush, thrash (especially Metallica), and the early prog metal bands (Queensryche, Fates Warning, Iron Maiden). BTBAM adds Meshuggah, metalcore/melodeath, and probably some others into the mix.

Metrically explorative, awesome. To see who inspired BTBAM, check out the cover tracklist from their "The Anatomy of" album

Check out mordecai from their second album if you haven't yet. Similar vibes imo.

At 15:30 youre asking about the progressive metal influences. There is a btbam album called the anatomy of where they do covers of a bunch of songs that influenced them specifically. Outside of that though, a lot of prog metal influence stems from early 70s proggy/blues rock. Gentle Giant for example is currently being remastered by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, a handful of albums have already been done and I recommend checking out the remastered the House the Street the Room; Lots of weird time and tactus changes with a big guitar solo, syncopated key parts, and unusual effects on unusual instruments for blues rock. Another is King Crimson, specifically the album discipline where there are very fast time shifting runs that layer on top of each other until the polyrhythms overlap. There is also a recording of indiscipline played live with three famous prog drummers that comes up quickly on youtube. On the heavier end a lot of people point towards the Tool album Lateralis, all the parts except the drums are extremely easy and given how popular Tool was at the time many people have tool as an influence and that is definitely true for progressive metal people. Meshuggah is also commonly mentioned because of the way they use cymbals to que complicated rhythmic parts and build low end grooves on extra extended guitars.

My favorite album from my favorite band 😎

This is such a great album!

Yo! You’re all (reactioners) sleeping on Cave Sermon Divine Laughter. Came out Feb 1st of this year. Crystallised and Liquid Gold are amazing. THERE ARE LITERALLY ZERO REACTIONS! You can be the first. 🤷‍♂️

By the way Bryan, if you want a sense of who influenced BTBAM: they released a coveralbum after this one where they recorded their versions of songs from artists that influenced them. It is called 'The Anatomy Of'.

sweep

legendary

8:39 😆

The Dear Hunter and BTBAM back to back, what a treat! Hope to see more of both. Thanks Bryan!