Metal Wani’s Carl O’Rourke recently sat down with Between the Buried And Me front-man Tommy Rogers to talk about the bands new two part album, ‘Automata 1’ and ‘Automata 2’, his solo endeavors as well as his latest solo effort ‘Don’t Touch The Outside’ and more.
On releasing their new record in two parts at separate times over the year, building excitement and anticipation for new music twice, Tommy explained some of the thinking behind this decision.
“Originally we were gonna do video content for each album. We though it would be cool to do that. But because of time and money, that didn’t work out, that always happens. [Laughs] But the more we kind of sat with it, the more we liked the idea. There’s a lot of reasons. I mean A, just because something has been released a certain way, we’re like why don’t we mix it up and try something different? We weren’t making a statement like this is how we’re gonna do things now. But the album felt right to do that. There was that kind of intermission right down the middle which wasn’t planned. It just naturally was there, which was rare for us, to have a pause in our music.”
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“Just as fans of music, and being in a band, you spend all this time creating your work and it comes out and then that’s that, the excitement’s gone. We were like, this would be two separate moments this year where fans will get new music, we’ll get excited twice, all these things kind of bundled into one and we were like, let’s just try it and see what happens. I kind of look at it as, when we write, or how we do anything with our business, it’s all about trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn’t.”
“I mean that was one of the reasons for me personally, I love that idea. Like you said, I mean we all get anything we want instantly, with music especially. It was kind of fun having people hear one and be like, ‘I want more!’ and we’re like, ‘Not yet!’ [Laughs].”
Speaking about how working solo differs from his time spent in B.T.B.M, Tommy said,
“For me, it’s literally everything and anything I can try. The band, obviously it’s very experimental, but it would be tough for the band to have an electronic record, you know, something like that. [Laughs] I’m very lucky that I don’t have the pressure of doing anything outside of what I really wanna do, and simplicity is key, for me. Because the band is so much work, and there’s so much that goes into these songs, it’s nice that with the solo stuff that a song can be born from one idea, or a riff. There could be a song with four chords, you know? Which really, obviously, isn’t something that falls in with the band category. So it’s just a lot more loose. I think that’s kind of the itch it scratches.”
“I write most of my music when I’m on the road with BTBAM so it’s almost therapy in a way. On a daily level, it gives me something to do during the day, to kind of just try anything, you know? I’ll wake up, sit down on my laptop and just start messing with this sound and things happen. It’s fun. I never know where it’s gonna go. I literally never know where it’s gonna go, and that’s what’s fun with it.”