The Silent Circus

The Silent Circus is the second studio album by the American progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me. Released October 21, 2003, it was their first album to be released through Victory Records after their departure from Lifeforce Records. It was re-released in 2006 with a bonus DVD included. The album includes 10 tracks with a hidden song titled "The Man Land" hidden at the end of "The Need for Repetition". This is the band's last release with guitarist Nick Fletcher and bassist Jason King. It is also the band's only album with drummer Mark Castillo and the only album not produced by Jamie King. The album was remixed and remastered in 2020.

The Silent Circus
Studio album by Between the Buried and Me
Released	October 21, 2003 October 3, 2006 (reissue)[1]
Recorded	2003
Genre	Metalcore[2][3][4] progressive metal[5] technical death metal[4]
Length	52:56
Label	Victory
Producer	Matthew Ellard Between the Buried and Me
Between the Buried and Me chronology
Between the Buried and Me (2002) The Silent Circus (2003) Alaska (2005)
Re-issue cover
Cover for the reissue of The Silent Circus

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[6]
PopMatters	8/10[7]
Punknews	[5]

A music video was released for the song "Mordecai"; the video starts with the first nineteen seconds of "Reaction" before transitioning into "Mordecai".

The two part song "Lost Perfection" are the first songs in the Parallax story, which would further develop in "Prequel of the Sequel" from their album Colors and "Swim to the Moon" from their album The Great Misdirect. The Parallax story later became its own EP and album respectively, The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues and The Parallax II: Future Sequence.

Reception

The album received generally positive reviews from professional critics. Adrien Begrand of PopMatters opined in a positive review for the album, "The Raleigh, North Carolina, band had sliced and diced its way through multiple extreme metal subgenres, bridging the "math metal" complexity of the Dillinger Escape Plan, the godly hardcore of Converge, the furious technical death metal of Nile, and the more melodic strains of mid-'90s Swedish death metal with astonishing dexterity."^[7] Kurt Morris of Allmusic commented, "One minute the band may be playing thrash metal and the next they're flowing into death growls and thick guitar riffs. They certainly show a mastery of the hardcore and metal styles that many bands their age can take a lot longer to understand. The metal take on things can seemingly change in a flash as lead singer Tommy Rogers fleshes out his vocals and utilizes the keyboards to create something that sounds more like it should be on a Smashing Pumpkins album".^[6]

In 2021, The Silent Circus was included on BrooklynVegan's list of "15 Seminal Albums From Metalcore's Second Wave (2000-2010)."^[8]

Track listing

All lyrics are written by Tommy Rogers; all music is composed by Between the Buried and Me.

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Lost Perfection A) Coulrophobia"	4:13
2.	"B) Anablephobia"	3:01
3.	"Camilla Rhodes"	4:49
4.	"Mordecai"	5:48
5.	"Reaction"	2:01
6.	"(Shevanel Take 2)"	3:14
7.	"Ad a dglgmut"	7:38
8.	"Destructo Spin"	4:46
9.	"Aesthetic"	3:45
10.	"The Need for Repetition" (song ends at 6:16, a hidden track entitled "The Man Land" begins at 11:16.)	13:37
Total length:		52:56

Re-issue DVD^[9]

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Lost Perfection A) Coulrophobia" (live)	3:51
2.	"Lost Perfection B) Anablephobia" (live)	3:00
3.	"Destructo Spin" (live)	4:09
4.	"Roboturner" (live)
5.	"All Bodies" (live)
6.	"Mordecai" (live)
7.	"Alaska" (live)
8.	"Metal Injection Interview"
9.	"Mordecai" (music video)	6:07
10.	"Alaska" (music video)	3:58

Personnel

Between the Buried and Me

• Tommy Giles Rogers – lead vocals, keyboards
• Paul Waggoner – lead guitar, rhythm guitar, backing vocals, vocals on "Shevanel Take 2"
• Nick Fletcher – rhythm guitar
• Jason King – bass guitar
• Mark Castillo – drums

Production

• Matthew Ellard – production, mixing, recording
• Between the Buried and Me – production
• Carl Platter – drum technician