Between The Buried And Me: Why They Hated Ozzfest
Friday May 30, 2008 @ 10:00 AM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

By Pete Richards

North Carolina's Between The Buried And Me recently came through Ontario and Quebec for a small mini-tour, allowing us to have a quick chat with bassist Dan Briggs. Underground 'heads have never been strangers to the band's progressive metalcore style, though they've also garnered much mainstream attention since touring with Ozzfest in 2006. Making a strong debut in September with Colors only increased their popularity, leading them to an upcoming North American tour with Dream Theater. We talked with Briggs about their newfound success, their latest album and why they'll never tour with Ozzfest again.

Between The Buried And Me (Photo by C Johnson)

ChartAttack: You must be proud of how well Colors has sold.
Dan Briggs: Yeah, it did really well. We're really excited about it, glad that people kind of adapted to the whole Wall album and you know, musically it's kind of conceptual and has a lot going on. People were really taken to it both on the road and on the record, so it's good.

It debuted at #57 on the Billboard 200.
It's cool. It's cool. Victory [Records] did a good push for it before it came out and I guess they got what they expected. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to us. It's cool and whatever, but we're proud of the record, so we don't really care how it sold. We knew it was the best thing we had done and it's nice that other people think that as well.

It's amazing that this kind of extreme music is doing so well now at a mainstream level.
Well, that was kind of the point on Colors. We really wanted to distance ourselves from the bands that we were being associated with because the Ozzfest tour was, like, 15 bands that we got clumped in with that we didn't sound anything like or share anything in common with. That kind of fueled us to push ourselves and write the record that we really wanted to write.

I would think being a band that sounds a bit different from all the other bands on Ozzfest could kind of help you stand out.
Yes and no. I mean, it just wasn't for us. We hated the experience. It was awful. It was terrible. The last song on Colors, "Whitewall," is all about the Ozzfest experience and just how lame it was.

Why?
It's just like a talent show. It's not for us. It's not for a band that writes long songs that are really involved and take time to sit down and understand. You know, you can't play a 20-minute set and play three songs and expect that people are going to walk away really grasping something.

It seems Ozzfest is broken into two categories: The headlining bands that draw large crowds and the lesser-known bands there to showcase themselves to those people.
Yeah, it was nice to get it over with.

Really, so this is the scoop: "Between The Buried And Me Hated Ozzfest."
Oh yeah. It's old news anyway. We've been talking about it since before Colors came out. It pretty much fueled the Colors writing experience, et cetera.

So what else are you working on?

Well, we're coming to Canada now, and then we're going to do Dream Theater and then we're going back over to Europe and then we're probably doing some more stuff in the States and overseas as well, and then wrap up the Colors run and start working on our next record, I guess late next fall or sometime. We're all kind of writing right now and getting some ideas together, so we're ready to get back into it and start writing again. That's kind of the fun part — being creative.