The Overseer: We Search, We Dig
Posted July 19, 2012
By TCMRB,
Hailing from Arkansas, The Overseer, is Solid State's newest metal act, and easily one of the industry's most promising. The band has played over 400 shows in the past two years and has put in the work to get to the point they are at now. We Search, We Dig has ten songs of purely great metal music, that I would describe as melodic metal. Vocalist Anthony Rivera, has a very good voice that is maybe a little higher pitched than I would like, but it has still impressed me. The thing that probably stuck out to me the most though is the clean vocals by Darren King. They are a nice compliment to Rivera and helped set apart The Overseer from other bands like them.
We Search, We Dig opens with their single, "Secrets," which got me very much interested in the band from the moment I heard it. The song has a nice mixture between Rivera's vocals and King's vocals, along with some pretty sweet riffs that help start the album off very well. "Dredge" follows that up very nicely, with a song that is a little more heavy on the clean vocals, but at the same time very heavy as far as instrumentals go. I am not a huge fan of Rivera's voice at certain points during this song, but for the most part, the song is very nice way to follow up "Secrets."
"Amend" is an amazing song, and also the longest on the album (I love it when bands do that!). It is one of those songs where everything just fell into place perfectly to create a masterpiece; the vocals - clean and unclean - are spectacular, and the instrumentals are super heavy to the point that it feels almost like maybe August Burns Red. Another plus about "Amend" is that it is one of the few metal song that I can get stuck in my head on a daily basis, because it is so catchy. I rarely find myself singing hardcore songs in my head, but I definitely catch myself singing "Amend" a lot.
"Dreamer" is possibly the heaviest song on the record, that wastes no time getting to the heavy stuff. From the first second of the song you can tell they mean business. I guess my biggest complaint with not only this song, but with the album in general though, is the brevity. The album is super short, clocking in at only 30 minutes, and this song in particular is a little less than two and three quarter minutes long. When I love an album, I want to be able to listen to it for a long time, and not be able to listen to it all twice in an hour. However, on the flip side, I also do not want an awesome band to add filler to an album to make it longer, because it is so easy to tell when a band does that. So, I guess it is hard to get it just right as far as the length of an album goes.
After the halfway point, the album slows down for one song - "Traitor" - and then picks right back up where they left off with the super fast paced, "Vulture." The one thing I respect from these guys is that the quality of the album is spectacular, and you can tell all the time that went into it. It was not just thrown together, but it feels like an album that was worked on for a while and really sounds like an album released by a band that has been in the industry for a lot longer than them.
The album finishes up with three very strong tracks in "Lost," "Estrange," and "Absolve." "Lost" shows off their melodic metal side very well, in that it is not super heavy, but is still a very strong track with some of my favorite guitar work on the album. "Estrange" is a great song with the most amount of clean vocals on the whole album. I love the song from start to finish, mostly because the instrumentals and vocals seem to mix so well together on it. For about the first two minutes the song is purely clean vocals, and then Rivera comes on with about a minute left to go and picks back up with the unclean vocals to round off the track very nicely. "Absolve" finishes off the album with another super heavy song that feels more urgent than any other song on the record that is very well expressed in the lyric, "I am my own worst enemy. My mind is a tragedy, I have never seen it so clear."
I am so excited for The Overseer and this album. We Search, We Dig is possibly the strongest debut album from a metal band that I have ever heard. The album sounds so much like something a veteran band would have done, but it is their debut album! It truly has blown me away. Solid State was very smart to sign these guys, and I think all the other hardcore record companies will be kicking themselves for not signing them. After listening through the album multiple times, I have fallen in love with it so much, and I think you will too if you give it a shot.
Favorite Song: Amend
This review has been reprinted on NRT with permission from The Christian Music Review Blog. Click here to visit today! View All Music And Book Reviews By TCMRB | View TCMRB's Profile
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