Between the Buried and Me – Parallax

I’d recommend reading this along with listening to the album, following it song by song. Bear in mind this is simply my interpretation.

Oh boy, here we go. This is a big one. I recently wrote up the story for Between the Buried and Me’s 2018 album Automata, and it inspired me to tackle their first true concept album – Parallax. Split into two records, an EP called The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues and and LP called The Parallax II: Future Sequence, it’s the band’s most complex concept to date. So buckle in, cause this is gonna be one hell of a ride…

The Parallax: Hyper Sleep Dialogues

This EP introduces the two main characters of this story – Prospect 1 and Prospect 2.

Specular Reflection

Prospect 1 washes up on the shore of an island. The last thing he remembers is drifting out to sea after he tried to commit suicide. In a previous song by Between the Buried and Me titled Swim to the Moon, the last track on their 2009 album The Great Misdirect, they tell a story of a man drifting out to sea to try and kill himself. This man is Prospect 1. He has dreams of meeting, but can never interact with, himself. Prospect 1 doesn’t know how he ended up on this island, and is in a daze.

Prospect 2 is also having dreams of meeting himself. He wakes up from this to see his wife next to him, smelling her skin and feeling her hair, only to fall back to these dreams.

Augment of Rebirth

Prospect 2, who works for a secret government called The Night Owls, is sent on an urgent mission to fulfil this government’s goal. They have determined that the planet will be unfit for life soon, and have scouted a new planet to start humanity again. They have been developing a way to plant human souls in the dirt so that they can build society from scratch on the new planet. Prospect 2’s mission is to go to this planet and see that this is achieved.

He decides to leave his wife forever to pursue this mission, and leaves a written note for her. He sees his new mission as having more importance than his current life. He starts to compare himself to God, seeing his mission as the saving of the human race. He boards the ship to travel to the new planet.

Prospect 1 isn’t sure if his life on the island is real, and wants to get back to his family and his home. After walking around the island for days, he sees a boa – he’s been found.

Prospect 2 reaches the new planet and begins his mission. He plants the souls of the humans that will form the first new civilisation. The weight of this task weighs on Prospect 2’s mind. His God complex gives him some comfort, but he feels lonely and scared.

Lunar Wilderness

Prospect 1 is rescued by the people on the boat, and begins sailing back home. He doesn’t know how he’s going to explain his experience to his family, and this weighs on his mind. The boat reaches land, but where there was once his life, there is now nothing he recognises. His home and family are gone.

Prospect 2 heads back to the old planet after completing his mission. As he approaches his home, he comes to the horrifying realisation that the planet is gone.

The Parallax II: Future Sequence

Here’s where the real journey starts.

Goodbye to Everything

This song takes place at the very end of the story. Prospect 1 and Prospect 2 are in their ship together watching their planet approach the sun and burn away. They question is there were ever really alive. They determine that this was their destiny. They switch the ship off and wait for the end.

Astral Body

Prospect 2 no longer feels connected to his body. He sees himself in space from an outside perspective – astral projection. He then begins to analyse and dissect himself. He observes his own hands speaking to him. He’s lost his mind. However, this whole experience is a dream.

Lay Your Ghosts to Rest

Prospect 2 wakes up from his dream and tries to clear his mind. He determines that he can either end his life inside this ship and drift through space forever, or he can travel back to the new planet he planted the human souls on and figure out what to do from there. He drifts in and out of a dream state where he has time to think. He realises that leaving his wife behind with nothing but a written note was an extremely selfish thing to do, and left her heartbroken. He realises that killing himself would also be selfish. Although playing God felt better before he started analysing himself and his actions, he knows that he must travel back to the new planet. There is documentation aboard the ship in a file named Folder 502. This documentation contains the instructions on how to get back to this new planet. Prospect 2 has made his decision, and powers up the ship to start his journey.

Autumn

Prospect 2’s mind is filled with confusion, fear and doubt.

Extremophile Elite

Prospect 1 continuously has dreams of meeting himself – identical in looks but seemingly with a different goal in mind. He wakes up from a dream to find himself in the dirt surrounded by machines that seem to be building a city, and it seems familiar. The sound of these machines grows louder and louder in Prospect 2’s head until he can’t take it any more, and buries his head in the dirt. The world around him stops. Prospect 1 drifts in and out of a dream state. All of a sudden he feels his head being pulled out of the dirt. He looks up to see the man he’s been seeing in his dreams – an identical copy of himself.

Prospect 2 arrives on the new planet. He daydreams himself talking to his own hands. He sees machines building something in the distance and decides to head in that direction. After stumbling down a dirt hill towards these machines, he sees a man with his head buried in the dirt. He pulls the head out and discovers it’s just a corpse. Upon further inspection he sees something shoved underneath the corpse’s skull. He pulls it out and discovers that it’s the note he left for his wife before embarking upon this mission. He falls to his knees, shaking. Prospect 2 then wakes up, and realises this was a vision.

Parallax

Prospect 1 and Prospect 2 now realise they are connected to one another. They each realise they have a power that they can’t control, and that they must decide the fate of this planet and of humanity.

The Black Box

The Night Owls, the secret government that sent Prospect 2 on his mission, speak about what they are responsible for. They, in fact, created everything. Life and everything before it. They question Prospect 2’s strength, and whether or not he will be able to build himself up to overcome them.

Telos

After much deep thought, Prospect 2 decides that this new Earth must be destroyed. Humanity is flawed and will destroy anything they come into contact with, and must be eradicated in order to save the universe. Prospect 2 tries to convince Prospect 1 to join him in this, who agrees only because he’s scared of Prospect 2.

Just after Prospect 2 leaves on his mission, his wife writes a letter to her husband explaining how much he hurt her. Everything she sees reminds her of him, and it’s unbearable. She doesn’t even know where he went or why because she never even received a letter from him. She buries the letter in the garden outside in case he ever comes back. She decides to end her own life by burning down the house they built together and waiting inside. As their life is burning around her, she questions if she was ever in his mind.

Prospect 1, although having agreed to Prospect 2’s plan, just wants to live a normal life. He thinks that just because they have the power to do this doesn’t mean they should, and that they should just let nature take its course. He forms his own plan to escape with his new love who he’s met during their time on this new planet – one of the human souls planted by Prospect 2. Prospect 1 believes that Prospect 2 doesn’t suspect anything.

Bloom

During Prospect 1’s time drifting towards the island he washed up on, he sank to the bottom of the ocean and was found by a village of sea creatures. At this point Prospect 1 has drowned and died, but the creatures revive him and send him back to the surface to once more drift towards the island. Before they do this, they hypnotise him and experiment on him in order to understand his species. Prospect 1 is unsure of whether this was dream or not.

Melting City

The Black Mask is an agent hired by The Night Owls to carry out various important tasks. Just after Prospect 2 embarks on his mission, The Black Mask is assigned the task of retrieving the note Prospect 2 left for his wife because they don’t want her to know why he left or that he was working with them. The Black Mask retrieves the note and keeps it. This is unusual for him to do because he never lets personal feelings get in the way of his work. On this one occasion, even though he knows he shouldn’t, he opens the letter and reads it. The contents of the letter play on his mind, and after much thought he decides to return to Prospect 2’s wife and return the letter. When he arrives to the house, all he finds is piles of ash and the woman nowhere to be found. He feels regret for what he’s done. She’ll never know why Prospect 2 left her, and how much she meant to him.

Silent Flight Parliament

Prospect 2 has decided what he must do. He wants to go home, but this time home doesn’t mean back to his family. Home means death.

The Night Owls taunt Prospect 2, telling him that no matter what he does he can’t change the fate of anything in the universe because they are ultimately responsible for all creation and destruction.

At this point Prospect 2 realises that The Night Owls and Prospect 1 are against him. First he enters his ship because he remembers there’s a black box inside labelled Property of the Night Owls that wasn’t meant to be opened. Prospect 2 has opened this box before out of curiosity, and knows that there are instructions inside on how to tow asteroids through space. This is how he will destroy this new Earth – he will tow a large asteroid between the planet and the sun, pulling the planet out of orbit and towards the sun to be incinerated, all human life dying along with it.

First, Prospect 2 finds where Prospect 1 has been hiding – in a secluded house with his new love. While they’re sleeping, Prospect 2 uses gas to completely knock Prospect 1 unconscious and abducts him, taking him back to their ship.

Prospect 1 finally wakes up, and realises he is aboard the ship once more. He’s now in outer space. He hears Prospect 2 laughing manically, and realises what is about to happen. Prospect 1 accepts his fate.

Goodbye to Everything (Reprise)

Prospect 1 and Prospect 2 look out onto the planet as it hurtles towards the sun. They switch the ship’s engine off and peacefully drift through space, awaiting their end.

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Aaaand there we go, Between the Buried and Me’s mind-bending space epic explained. If there are gonna confusing elements or mistakes in any of my write-ups, it’s gonna be this one, so feel free to let me know if there’s anything you don’t understand. Also, I recommend you read all of these story explanations as you listen to the album they’re referring to, but it’s especially true in this case. This album is one of my all-time favourites, and almost definitely my favourite album by Between the Buried and Me. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to the next one!

– Kane