Between the Buried and Me bassist Dan Briggs name-dropped St. Louis, MO experimental metal band Lye by Mistake in one of the first interviews I ever did for this site, back in August of 2007. I asked him what he’d been listening to lately, and he answered thusly:

My buddies from St. Louis, Lye By Mistake. I’ve just been listening to them so much lately. I can’t get enough of them. They’re honestly out of control. They’re, I guess, you know, I hate to… they kind of have the Dillinger really intense, syncopated patterns and they’re really kind of jarring, the most musical fusion crazy stuff. It’s this balance of absolute insanity and really awesome, awesome brutality. They’re one of the newer bands that I’m really stoked on, who hopefully we’ll get something goin’ for them.

Over two years later, it appears that Briggs has been able to “get something goin’ for them” indeed; the band has just signed a deal with Red Chord vocalist Guy Kozowyk’s Black Market Activities label, an imprint of Metal Blade Records.

The band is really fucking good, and Brigg’s description is mostly accurate; I’m not sure I hear the Dillinger influence as much as I do other, more jazzy and more shreddy/proggy stuff, but that doesn’t make what the band is doing any less original or astonishing. Stylistically, it makes a whole lot of sense that a member of Between the Buried and Me would take a particular liking to them.

This is really fucking cool stuff; one listen to the first track “Money Eating Mary, Part 2″ on Lye by Mistake’s MySpace page should be all the convincing you need.

-VN