In the not so distant past when I strictly listened to metalcore, I was a Solid State Records junkie. So naturally, when I saw a new band had signed to Solid State and was releasing their debut album We Search, We Dig, I was the one to take up the review. This band that I am referring to is The Overseer, a four member band hailing from Bentonville, Arkansas.
The first thing I noticed about The Overseer was how similar they sounded to the 2010 Underoath. The screaming combined with the slow and sometimes chanting cleans threw me back a couple of years. The screaming sounds bland and rarely changes pitches. When I inspected the cleans further I realized that I can say exactly the same thing about them. The instrumentation is slower and the only purpose that it seems to serve is to bring out the vocals more. Overall, there is nothing impressive and I feel like I've heard it all multiple times from multiple bands.
Like every other band on Solid State, The Overseer seeks to spread the message of God through their music and make it pretty obvious through many of their lyrics. The Overseer can keep up a steady melody and makes their songs easy to sing along to but all of the tracks sound exactly the same. While listening to We Search, We Dig I felt as though it was just one thirty minute song with a couple of pauses thrown in. On top of that, nothing about this album stands out.
The sound that The Overseer is going for has been done time and time again and in most cases, better. If you were a huge fan of Underoath's Disambiguation or enjoy other Solid State bands then you should give this album a shot. By no means is it a bad album, but it is a disappointment.
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"The screaming sounds bland and rarely changes pitches. When I inspected the cleans further I realized that I can say exactly the same thing about them." This makes virtually no sense. All of the clean vocal melodies are consistently variable in pitch. They are MELODIES, and well-written ones at that.
ReplyDelete"The instrumentation is slower." Again, this makes no logical sense. Instrumentation, by definition, does not have a speed associated with it.
This review serves no practical purpose other than to parade your musical ignorance. Give the album another listen, and please, for the sake of your readers, take a music lesson or two.
Oh, and congratulations on your first comment.