Progressive rock (also referred to as prog rock or prog) is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of "a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of the 1960s as much as take its rightful place beside the modern classical music of Stravinsky and Bartók."

Progressive rock bands pushed "rock's technical and compositional boundaries" by going beyond the standard rock or popular verse-chorus-based song structures. The Oxford Companion to Music states that progressive rock bands "...explored extended musical structures which involved intricate instrumental patterns and textures and often esoteric subject matter." Additionally, the arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and later world music. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy. Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme."

Between the Buried and Me is an American heavy metal band from Raleigh, North Carolina. They have released a total of five studio albums, as well as a cover album, an EP and a live DVD/CD. A majority of the group's releases were made through Victory Records, until their shift to Metal Blade in 2011 where they released their first EP, The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues through the label on April 12, 2011.

Between the Buried and Me was founded in 2000 in Raleigh, North Carolina by vocalist Thomas Giles Rogers Jr., guitarist Paul Waggoner, drummer Will Goodyear, guitarist Nick Fletcher (formerly of Empire Falls), and bassist Jason King. The band's name is derived from a section of lyrics in the Counting Crows song, "Ghost Train;" "Took the cannonball down to the ocean/Across the desert from the sea to shining sea/I rode a ladder that climbed across the nation/Fifty million feet of earth between the buried and me."

Between the Buried and Me's first release was a three-song demo, containing the tracks "Use of a Weapon", "What We Have Become", and "More of Myself to Kill". These three tracks were re-recorded for the band's self-titled debut album, released through Lifeforce Records in 2002. The album includes the track "Arsonist", a protest against the beliefs and practices of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. The song "Aspirations" became the band's first music video. At the time, the release was not widely known, but did manage to catch the attention of Victory Records, to which they later signed. Victory reissued the album in 2004 as an enhanced CD. Today, songs from the album are rarely played live.