Live Review: Between the Buried and Me at the Observatory North Park, San Diego (2026)

A Band That Knows Exactly Who They Are

I’d never been to the Observatory North Park before, and I almost didn’t get here at all — the same bill played Los Angeles the night before and I had a prior commitment that kept me from it. So San Diego it was. The room holds around 1,300 and maybe 700 or 800 of us showed up, which on paper sounds like a soft night. It wasn’t. Instead of shoulder-to-shoulder misery there was room to breathe, space to actually watch, and a venue I now can’t believe I’d never been to. Between the Buried and Me headlining, Fallujah and Imperial Triumphant warming it up. I came for the headliner. I left thinking about the whole night.

Fallujah opened, and I’ve seen them a few times across more lineup changes than I can count. They started a little flat — it took me a minute to lock into them — but somewhere around the halfway mark they flipped a switch, and I could see the band start having fun. The crowd came with them. They leaned on newer Xenotaph material, and “Kaleidoscopic Waves” was a real highlight, but the one I was waiting for was “The Void Alone” — the lone cut from Dreamless, which is still where my favorite Fallujah lives. Only about 400 people in the room by then. Didn’t matter. Strong opener.

Then Imperial Triumphant, and here’s where the night got weird. Fifteen minutes after Fallujah cleared the stage they were on — the crowd barely caught its breath. I’d heard the name for years and somehow never actually heard them. Avant-garde black metal, and that undersells it. At one point the bassist was playing with a trumpet that had a laser shooting off it. The frontman only addressed us through a vocoder. It was strange, full stop — good strange, the kind where it’s genuinely cool to watch a band do exactly what they do with zero compromise. It just wasn’t for me. The crowd warmed to it across the 45 minutes, and I respected every minute of it more than I enjoyed it.

Twenty minutes later the room was chanting “BTBAM, BTBAM” — the same chant I remember from every other time I’ve caught them — and the band walked out to no set dressing. No backdrop. Just a small sign reading The Blue Nowhere, after the new record. That’s the thing about Between the Buried and Me: they are so unapologetically themselves. And they sounded incredible. Heavy when they wanted to be heavy, and the room answered with an insane pit that didn’t let up. “God Terror” tore the roof off. “Selkies: The Endless Obsession” did it again. They closed on “Silent Flight Parliament,” one of my all-time favorites of theirs, and I was exactly where I wanted to be.

The whole thing wrapped by 10:15 — early enough to surprise me, perfect for the drive back to LA. Tommy Rogers, who barely talks at these things, actually riffed with us through some technical difficulties and thanked the crowd for skipping the Rush show up in LA that night. A half-full room turned into something intimate. I’m really, really glad I caught this one.

Score: 8.5/10

Setlist

1. Psychomanteum
2. Fossil Genera – A Feed from Cloud Mountain
3. Condemned to the Gallows
4. God Terror
5. Absent Thereafter
6. Selkies: The Endless Obsession
7. The Future Is Behind Us

Encore:

1. Silent Flight Parliament
2. Goodbye to Everything Reprise