Outdoor shows in Florida are truly unique because, at almost any time of the year, you can catch a show outdoors and be mostly comfortable. There are some exceptions to that rule, of course, and we’re entering the season where spending any time outdoors is beyond uncomfortable and borderline suicidal.

Wearing jeans to an outdoor concert in the middle of June was a bad choice, but some shows are worth suffering for. Between The Buried and Me, along with tourmates Fallujah and Imperial Triumphant, rolled into Tampa on Monday night to catch a glimpse of the crowd who packed the outdoor stage at The Orpheum. The only question left is would the sun or the bands do more of the face-melting?

FALLUJAH

San Francisco’s Fallujah opened the night. About 10 minutes before their set, I was in Fallujah’s merch line trying to score a t-shirt for my wife, which I unknowingly purchased from lead vocalist Kyle Schaefer. As the band took the stage, Kyle grabbed the microphone and looked down to see that the guy he sold an evil-kitten t-shirt to was now standing in the photo pit aiming a camera back at him, and we more or less did the pointing Spiderman meme at each other.

It was a funny moment that didn’t last particularly long, because the band launched into a heavy assault that somehow made an already hot night even more unbearable. They played through a nice mix of both old and new material, and the crowd was receptive to everything the band threw at them.

Fallujah has been around forever, and it’s amazing seeing them still performing at a high level. Even though they opened the show, it was really refreshing seeing a band that has the bonfides to headline their own tour not phone it in and still play with headliner energy.

IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT

Next up, Imperial Triumphant was the band I was most curious to see live. A friend of mine caught the Allentown show early in the run and said “Hey, you really gotta check out these guys, they’re kind of insane.” The New York-based band brings with them a unique atmosphere, an eclectic mix of art deco-inspired masks, reminiscent of the 1920’s movie Metropolis, mixed with an almost religious paganism that feels both alien and primal. It’s a truly unique experience that must be seen to truly understand.

Their music was fast and heavy, very blackened death metal, but it had these strange dissonant moments that almost made it feel closer to grindcore, everything feeling on the verge of collapsing at any second. The music, along with their on-stage routine, made it feel like more of a stage play than a concert. It felt wholly unique and refreshing. In between songs, vocalist Zachary Ezrin spoke into a talkbox that made the members feel even more like automatons than humans. The band got a huge reception from the crowd, and they were really the perfect middle-of-the-bill band to make sure that the crowd was prepped and ready for the headliner.

BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME

It’s been about 21 years since I last saw Between the Buried and Me perform live, sandwiched between Bleeding Through and Every Time I Die at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ, way back in the year of our lord 2005. What struck me about the band back then, which still rings true today, is that these guys are pretty damn good at their instruments. They might be some of the best instrumentalists at their respective instruments, yet they all somehow share the same band. What has happened over the last 20 years is that they have continued to grow and evolve, but they somehow kept that core sound which makes them uniquely them.

The band opened with the instrumental track “Mirador Uncoil,” which led into “Psychomanteum” from their latest album, The Blue Nowhere. The band sounded phenomenal live, truly better than the albums. Lead guitarist Paul Waggoner continues to shred at levels that border on “this guy has to be bored being this good at the guitar,” and drummer Blake Richardson is never beating the “drum machine that gained consciousness” allegations. There are very few bands still performing at the level that Between the Buried and Me are, and it was truly a treat to get a chance to experience that all over again.

After a few more tracks, the band dusted off an oldie and fan favorite, ‘Selkies: The Endless Obsession’ (which they also played at that 2005 show), and you better believe it still went just as hard as the day I first heard it two decades ago. The band ended with “The Future Is Behind Us”, before coming back after a very loud chant for ‘one more song’, which the band delivered in the form of the 15-minute-long goliath that is “Silent Flight Parliament.” Every song was played flawlessly, even though, as Waggoner joked earlier in their set, this outdoor Tampa set was somehow even hotter than the one they did in Austin earlier in the week. Regardless, the band persevered, the heat not affecting their performance at all.

I got into a conversation with someone earlier in the night, and they asked if I had checked out the setlist before the concert (of course, I had). We both agreed, prematurely, that this so-called The Blue Nowhere Tour really would have been improved by being just that: the album in its entirety, front-to-back. I’ve seen several other shows in the past year where that was the case, and honestly, I’d normally agree that an album like “The Blue Nowhere” should be experienced front-to-back in its entirety to truly appreciate as a whole.

After the encore, I don’t think I hold that position anymore. I think the setlist was perfectly crafted, and for a band with 11 studio albums, I think it (almost) had something for everyone.

It’s refreshing to see a band like Between the Buried and Me continue to push themselves as musicians and songwriters, always continuing to set the bar higher and higher, and every single time, they continue to clear it with ease. I hope it doesn’t take me another 20 years to catch them again, but I’m sure the Alaska: 40th Anniversary tour will be a blast either way.

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