Overcast - Reborn to Kill Again
Posted on August 19, 2008 at 8:00 am by admin
Ok all you modern metal, metalcore and hardcore kiddies, I want you to all gather around and throw this on. Why? Because metalcore helped real hardcore and real metal get big and/or get big again, and helped to give birth to metalcore as we know it today. While everyone might try to pretend that the whole metalcore thing is a brand new trend, Overcast goes all the way back to 1991, meaning that the members from this band, like Mike D’Antonio in Killswitch Engage and Brian Fair from Shadows Fall aren’t just musical vets in bands that are around 10 years old (or more), but players that’ve been in the scene for 17 years!
Metalcore this certainly is, but not the idea of running out, stealing some thrash, death, black or iron maiden riffs and sticking in single note breakdowns - which seems to be the blueprint today. No, while there’s a few places where the hardcore chord runnings, or more generally metallic moments, like a bit of thrash or a melodic guitar run becoming obvious, the general feeling is one beast that’s morphed into something completely unique. The vocals run from Brians signature yell to spoken word and a little singing as well, but throughout the whole album, you never get the impression that the band sat down to predetermine a certain sound, instead what comes off is pure inspiration. In case you’re really wondering, yes, you can hear where Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall came from.
Overcast certainly comes off as one of those bands that would’ve inhabited the world of noise rock back in the 90’s - the kind of bands that sometimes came from metal or hardcore, but never really fit in with scene because their sound was unique, which was the case for many noise bands of the 90’s.
Sometimes people can get a little disillusioned when a scene becomes popular, and then gets raped and pillaged. It really does suck to see kids who care only about big bands, then run out and try to ride off the coattails of popularity when making their own band, looking for rock stardom. It was never the intention of the pioneering bands in metalcore to get big, and some of them didn’t. Hopefully “Reborn to Kill Again” will open peoples eyes to help us remember that metalcore really meant something, and that there’s so much more beyond the tailored bands we have today.
Released August 19th, 2008
Overcast at MySpace
Metal Blade Records at MySpace
Buy this album at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
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