Between The Buried and Me Bring Complexity and Ingenuity to Islington Assembly Hall [Show Review]

Between The Buried And Me would have a very legitimate claim to being one of the most under appreciated bands in modern day metal. A career that now spans twenty-four years of peerless innervation that includes several 10/10 generational albums, the latest of which (The Blue Nowhere in 2025) by rights, should have been in everyone Top Ten of the year. Between The Buried And Me are an incredibly complex, diverse and unpredictable listen and it’s their fearless, all genre encompassing approach that has them beloved by those who are paying attention and an unreadable mystery to everyone else. And so tonight we come together at the Islington Assembly Hall to celebrate one of progressive metals most prolifically innovative bands.

You Win Again Gravity from Windsor, Berkshire are first up this evening. Off the back of releasing their most ambitious record to date Don’t Leave Me Here Pt.1 in 2025, this is a huge opportunity to shine for this incredibly talented band. And shine they do, bringing their ethereal flavour of progressive post-hardcore to the perfect audience and with an abundance of energy. It’s a sound that puts me in mind of early 2000s soundscape specialists Oceansize, they create these warm, neon scenes of melodic serenity that are cut through and throttled with really well crafted moments of scuzz and ferocity. They need maybe a little work on their stage presence and audience engagement which feels slightly stiff and awkward at times, but the music is there and the rest will come with time. Very impressive start to the evening.

IHLO are next to grace the stage and they arrive with a fair bit of a buzz about them. In August 2025 they released their second full length record Legacy which marked a real coming of age for them, showing a step up in the structuring of the songs and their ever growing story telling abilities. That being said, IHLO are a very different live experience than they are on record. They maintain the futuristic dream sequences, gazy, prog-like builds and frequently erratic pacing, but removing the polish and shine of the studio gives them a far more engaging and technically raw appeal. One thing I really like about IHLO is how good they are at concealing and saving the heavier edge of their sound, using it sporadically and when necessary to extenuate their songs rather than it necessarily defining them. Its a beautiful thing to watch a young band who are bursting with confidence and creativity really own their time on stage and it feels like the best is yet to come from these guys.

Between The Buried And Me are a band built for true lovers of alternative music. They fuse prog, jazz, death / black / tech / math, punk, classical, hardcore, pop… its a sensational merging of sounds that feels like waves of sonics and melodies, constructed in the most mindbending arrangements imaginable. BTBAM have created albums that have felt like the Da Vinci Code to pick apart and make sense of, but ultimately when given the time and attention these songs deserve, you will find a body of work above and beyond a majority of their closest peers in both quality and technical prowess.

Their latest release The Blue Nowhere in 2025 could be their most easily digestible record to date, which is saying something given it is still a mindmelter of an experience. For anyone unfamiliar with their work, imagine all the murderous energy of Meshuggah and all the unpredictable insanity of Primus, and you have Between The Buried And Me. They steamroll through a total mix bag of songs old and new, and bearing in mind this is a band who have 10-14 minute opus’s in their pocket, ten songs is an absolute treat!

Kicking off with “Absent Thereafter,” a 10 minutes blackend, progressive metalcore voyage that transitions into a deep south rock ‘n’ rollathon before hurtling through a spacegaze melding of the two. It is as complicated, insane and absolutely brilliant as it sounds. Every member of BTBAM feels like they have been hand picked from the upper echelons of their instrument class, absolute technicians of their craft. “Condemned To The Gallows”, at six minutes might be one of the shorter tracks today and the most straight ahead blast of tech metal you will find on the list. Roaring through obvious crowd favourites like “Prehistory” and “Silent Flight Parliament”, it really is like watching an orchestra bring the colours and emotion of a movie to life right in front of your eyes. The neon visuals and confident swagger of a band who live life in “The Pocket”, is spellbinding.

My personal highlight of the evening was interstellar, death metal ballad, “Sun Of Nothing”, which unites the entire venue into a mass rapturous sing along and genuine live moment to remember. Taking the night home with “Silent Flight Parliament” and “Goodbye To Everything Reprise” from 2012s The Parallax II: Future Sequence, it’s hard not to feel mentally and physically exhausted from the journey they have taken you on.

Between The Buried And Me deserve bigger venues, bigger crowds and all of the flowers and medals that should come with being one of metals most fearless bands. Artists and innovators in the purest sense, they continue to flourish and will forever amaze.

Between The Buried and Me Setlist:

1. Absent Thereafter
2. Selkies: The Endless Obsession
3. Condemned to the Gallows
4. God Terror
5. Sun of Nothing
6. Stare Into the Abyss
7. Prehistory
8. The Blue Nowhere
9. Silent Flight Parliament
10. Goodbye to Everything Reprise