Band's List Death Metal Overtorture At the End the Dead Await

Reviewing is fun. No, really it is. You get to listen to most records ahead of everybody else. Sometimes you even get freebies, you can get ecstatic on one album before everybody else does and when you have shite to review, bashing can prove actually pleasant. Actually, the worst thing about reviewing forthcoming releases is when you have albums that fall into neither categories. Albums that are good enough to say, well, it’s good enough but that don’t get your spirits neither too high nor too low. And that’s when it becomes complicated because you do have to write something about it.

And unfortunately, Overtoture’s debut, At the End the Dead Await, actually falls into this medium gap. Meaning I won’t have the pleasure to write how great it is because I don’t think it is but I’ll also have to refrain to go into berserk mode because it’s not that bad. Hailing from Sweden and comprising seasoned musicians from various other Swedish acts such as Demonical, Grave or Coldworker, you could probably safely assume it’s some kind of super band. Though to be perfectly honest, it seems every Death Metal musician in Sweden has played in Grave at one point or another. Musically, that “Grave” connection in Overtorture could be compared to Torture Division and Vicious Art, two bands that also feature previous Grave members (I told you it was a “connection”). From Torture Division, you could draw parallels in brutality and riffing. From Vicious Art, parallels in the melodic approach regarding guitar solos. The main differences is that Torture Division sound catchier and Overtorture do not have the groovy edge that makes Vicious Art, either. Again, something right in between.

I’ll throw away some Kudos at the band since they chose not to mimic the Sunlight sound and that’s a welcome change. The fact that the band is actually Swedish probably helped them to settle for something different. No overly “chainsaw” guitars, no dumb over-emphasis on d-beat, just plain good Death Metal. Honest and sincere, almost similar to the works of Rogga. But just like Rogga who unfortunately does often come up with good but just on par Death Metal, Overtorture do not manage to spice things up for the listener. The album will go on smoothly but in the end, the ten tracks seem almost prefabricated. Good sound, good solos, good drumming too but that’s about it and the main compartment that actually is at fault is a songwriting that comes out as rather generic almost fitting some kind of template. And as a good friend once put it: music does hate systems.

In the end, I’m not sure about the end result here. Though quality-wise Overtorture are no laughing stock, they’re just there among the many other bands that do something good but not great and in times of overabundance, people usually settle for the better stuff. I doubt that At the End the Dead Await will find itself high on anyone’s wishlist unless you’re a die-hard fan of anything Swedeath and have enough budget to spend on just about everything.