Hailing from Italy, Game Over literally live up to this album title on their second full-length Burst into the Quiet. Active since 2008, the quartet love the speedy gallop of Bay Area oriented acts like early Death Angel and Metallica, along with a slight nod to the UK scene as of late as Evile comes up a lot in terms of the tenacious vocals and gang background chorus work. Take in such instant headbangers like the call and response oriented “The Eyes (of the Mad Gardner)” -think “Blackened” at times- or the rhythmically progressive against occasional twisted guitar harmony trailing “No More” and I think you’ll be hard pressed to not participate in some form of neck straining, head flailing exercise.
Aspects of the crossover scene a la Nuclear Assault (I wonder if the band named themselves after this iconic New York group) come up on the shorter “Metropolis Pt. 3”, setting up the moodier landscape for the follow-up track “Trapped Inside Your Mind” that has a lot of that East Coast charm as bassist / vocalist Renato Chiccoli channels DD Verdi, Frank Bello and a little bit of local legends Extrema in his furious, thick low end duties. Guitarists Sanso and Ziro lay down a thick, potent thrash sound, using every slow to fast trick in the book on the closing title track.
Another case of a band who have their heads in the right place to begin that slow climb up the ladder, Game Over is necessary for those into the aforementioned entities and willing to handle the fact that at this stage in the game, their sound is literally not their own.
Matt Coe, HMS
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