PROGTOBER landed at Riverside Municipal Auditorium Between the Buried and Me + Hail The Sun
10/8/2025 - Riverside Municipal Auditorium - Riverside, California.
📸 by @wolfsnapphotos
Progressive metal took over Riverside for a night that could only be described as PROGTOBER, featuring two heavyweights of the genre: Between the Buried and Me and Hail The Sun. The timing couldn’t have been better. BTBAM had just dropped their eleventh studio album The Blue Nowhere in September, while Hail The Sun were teasing their upcoming release Cut. Turn. Fade. Back. with a couple of singles already out. This co-headlining run had me excited to finally hear some of their new material live.
Hail The Sun, fronted by the always magnetic Donovan Melero wasted no time and dove straight into “The Drooling Class,” a frantic burst of math-infused melody that immediately showed off Melero’s vocal range.
Before anyone could catch their breath, drummer Allen Casillas fired up the snare for “Human Target Practice.” Melero moved like a man possessed, spinning and dancing with the mic stand, tossing it skyward, and somehow never missing a note.
Their set was a rollercoaster of technical riffs and emotional chaos. Guitarists Aric Garcia and Shane Gann traded sharp riffs, weaving in and out of time changes while bassist John Stirrat anchored the sound. Melero’s lyrics cut deep, mixing vulnerability and philosophy in a way that made each chorus hit harder. The band even dropped a brand-new track, “Live Forever,” from the yet-to-be-released album. Despite no one knowing the words yet, the crowd dove right into moshing, screaming, and feeding off the chaos.
Then came Between the Buried and Me. They appeared through a thick wall of fog and kicked things off with the 11-minute epic “Disease, Injury, Madness” from The Great Misdirect. It was a journey through every musical realm imaginable, morphing from technical death metal to jazz to spacey prog and back again. Tommy Rogers jumped between screaming into the mic and playing keys mid-song while guitarists Paul Waggoner and Tristan Auman ripped through heavy riffs. Bassist Dan Briggs and drummer Blake Richardson delivered precision beats.
“Absent Thereafter” from the new record hit hard, unpredictable, and packed with those signature jazz-inspired runs that only BTBAM could pull off. Every song evolved as it went, and refused to end the way it started.
By the time they closed with “The Blue Nowhere,” and “Informal Gluttony,” the crowd had left everything on the floor. It wasn’t just any Wednesday night in Riverside, it was PROGTOBER.
