Posted on: December 20, 2010 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Over It has taken the open slot as Lobster’s most impressive band after Yellowcard left about a year and a half ago. Chances are after “Silverstrand”, Over It will do much the same thing (unless Lobster locked them down for a few albums). Anyways, “Silverstrand” opens up with the immediately radio-friendly “Siren on the 101”, a track that mixes melodic vocals with guitar lines that would normally seem much too heavy for them. However, everything else on ”Siren on the 101” is equally intense, whether it be the spastic drumming of James or the vocals laid down by Peter, Nick, and Seth. “Siren on the 101” is not their one impressive track, stacked in front of a disc of drek. Rather, “Waiting” continues the tradition of strong, guitar-driven pop-punk/emo music. Over It is the Midas of the new millennium – with each subsequent track on “Silverstrand”, their case for having one of the best albums of 2005 gets stronger. “Shine” comes through with a bass line that will pull at one’s heartstrings even more than Peter’s smoothed-out vocals. When one things that Over It will just rest on their laurels, the pseudo-punk “Ignore The Noise” comes out and blasts all listeners out of their seats. Imagine a Sum 41-style guitar riff coupled with the aforementioned Yellowcard-like vocals and one will begin to understand exactly how important “Ignore The Noise” is.

Messing with the style of instrumental arrangements during “We Are The Ordinary”, Over It continues showing their listener base that a brand of music that would typically strangle an act actually has enough wiggle room to create an album that is both innovative and coherent. Mike Green’s work on producing this album is even better than eir previous work, being Epitaph’s The Matches (which I had thought was the best in its genre). Each yeah has brought continually new things to the genre of “emo”; 2003 saw the falsetto by Claudio of Coheed & Cambria while 2004 saw the harder-rock angle covered correctly by the kids from My Chemical Romance (Avenged Sevenfold doesn’t count in this, as they’ve never committed to disc an original lick in their life). 2005 is the year of Over It, but for a slightly different reason that the two previous bands; where Coheed and Chemical were both intensely good at one specific thing, Over It has everything done in creating an album that will maintain its relevancy for years.

Top Tracks: Truth Is, Ignore The Noise

Rating: 8.6/10

Over It – Silverstrand / 2005 Lobster / 12 Tracks / http://www.overitonline.com / http://www.lobsterrecords.com / Reviewed 28 February 2005

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