The Great Misdirect is the fifth studio album by American progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me. It was released on October 27, 2009 through Victory Records and was produced by Jamie King. Despite containing only six tracks, the album reaches nearly an hour in total time length. The album contains their longest song, "Swim to the Moon", which surpasses 17 minutes. Frontman Tommy Giles Rogers described The Great Misdirect as "some of the best material we've ever created."
Between the Buried and Me began recording for The Great Misdirect during the summer of 2009. On August 31, the band released a four-minute teaser of the album containing various short clips of the album's songs onto their MySpace profile. On September 1, the band played a new song entitled "Obfuscation" as well as "Disease, Injury, Madness" at the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh, North Carolina. On September 16, "Obfuscation" was streamed live on Victory’s metal focused web platform, VictoryMetal.com. The Great Misdirect debuted at #36 on the Billboard 200. The deluxe edition of the album was released on October 26, it included a "making of" documentary about the album, a walk through of all the band members' gear, and a 5.1 surround sound mix of the album. The name of the record is derived from the last line of the song "Obfuscation". Rogers has stated that the nearly 18-minute-long closing song "Swim to the Moon" is - in some ways - a companion piece to "Sun of Nothing", a song featured on their previous album, Colors. This song is the prequel to the "Parallax Saga" following this album, ' and '. On March 16, 2010 the album was released in a limited editionvinyl, limited to 200 copies as clear pink vinyl and 1,250 as clear orange. The Great Misdirect also features their lead guitaristPaul Waggoner performing opening vocals on "Desert of Song" and Chuck Johnson performing vocals on "Swim to the Moon". A backwards message is included in the song "Disease, Injury, Madness" at 3:17-3:37. It is difficult to hear over the acoustic guitar riffs, but a voice is heard saying "You will sleep with the rest of the non-believers... If you disagree you will sleep... You will sleep with the rest of the non-believers...."
