REVIEW: Overthrower – Our Cruel World [2013]
Artist: Overthrower
Album: Our Cruel World
Label: Cloud Records
Preview/ buy: Bandcamp
The weapon of choice for many would probably be the machine gun, just hold the trigger and spray bullets all over the place in hopes of hitting your target, this is effective most of the time but alot of ammo is also wasted in the process. A far more economical choice would be to fire a single focussed high caliber shell that creates the same desirable effect. This is the concept that comes to mind when I listen to the freshly released EP ”Our Cruel World” from the Texas heavy-hardcore band Overthrower. This album has a sickly low and heavy guitar tune running through all of the songs that ensures none of the slow but deadly destruction featured in this release is lost for even a second. The hardcore and down-tempo grooving breakdowns create an unrelenting audible assault on your ears that can be considered lethal if music had the ability to kill you.
Being a band for little over one year now, its quite clear to me that the members of Overthrower are fans of heavy music, as most of their inspiration is drawn from bands like Demolisher and Colossal. I am happy they chose to go in that direction because the world needs way more of this down-tempo loveliness. When listening to the title track song it quickly becomes clear what the lyrical theme of ”Our Cruel World” is. No satanic stuff or lyrics centered around senseless violence but meaningfull topics like standing up for yourself in a corrupt world and fighting for what you believe in, so you could say listening to this EP gives you good motivation to face all your problems you might have and give them a big middle finger, and this is exacly the reason why I listen to hardcore bands like this, besides the excuse to go all out on heavy music ofcourse. My favorite track is ”The Free World” for sure, it features a breakdown so slow and heavy, it can only be described as the hand of death himself grabbing you by the leg and dragging you to the depths of the earth, slowly being crushed by the immense pressure around you as you make your way down. Add some guest vocals on top of that and you pretty much have everything needed to shit your pants.
What pleasantly surprised me about this release is the length, for an EP which has 6 songs (that includes an intro and outro) its almost 30 minutes long, thats alot better than most comparable releases, and gives you the impression that you got your moneys worth, a rare thing in this time where everything is rushed out the door. It goes without saying that if you like even one of the things I mentioned in your music, you should check this album out so that you can feed your subwoofer and your brain the bass dropping brutality it craves so much.
Rating: 9.5/10
For fans of: Demolisher, Colossal, Black Tongue, Those Who Fear, Genocide District
