Disappointment once again rears it's ugly unexpected face at me. Heavy Hearted (who should not be confused with Wholehearted from Wisconsin, or Have Heart from Massachusetts, or even Heart from Washington) proudly announces that at one time or another someone played some sort of instrument in the Upstate New York hardcore stalwarts, Buried Alive. Once I read that bit of information it was needless to point out that I got a little excited.
Buried Alive's Death to Your Perfect World is one the better slabs on wax that Victory Records put out in 1999. This was when Victory Records was still releasing hardcore albums that matter. So saying Death to Your Perfect World is a great album on Victory isn't a token slap in the face in 1999. It's almost a like receiving a Grammy. A Grammy that matters, even.
As I read on, I also found out that Heavy Hearted contains members of Polar Bear Club (awesome) and Roses are Red (well you can't win them all, can you?) but nothing got me more hyped on Overcast is the slim chance I might get Buried Alive part two. So what exactly did hear when I finally listened to Overcast? I got Ruiner part six, Killing Your Dream part seven, and Have Heart part twenty-six-and-a-half.
Hardcore in that last few years shows that just about any band that sounds like any other band can record an album and somehow get heard by some jaded music reviewer in Minnesota from an online independent music site. Wonders never cease. It's not that Heavy Hearted is a painful listen, on the contrary, they are quite adept at their art. It's just that I've seen this Mona Lisa painted in every single color over that five years that they all blend into a one band called BlacklistHaveKillingDreamRuiner. Or what the kids like to call "Amazingcore." By god, the kids are stupid.
If you have heard The Things We Carry or In Place Apart you've just heard their fourth cousin twice removed band, Heavy Hearted. The songs on Overcast follow a predictable formula of slow melodic interludes intermixed with bursts of speed and some tasty breakdowns. Every song is a cathartic adventure of late night sleeplessness with ramblings about how much life sucks but you need to keep your head up.
If Overcast were released six years ago I would have lauded it as something new and interesting. I don't always expect hardcore to be an inventive genre, however, it doesn't mean I have to listen to the same band over and over again under different names and from different locales. It would have been much more pleasing to my ears if Heavy Hearted tried to sound like Buried Alive but that's another dream this boy will never see come true. All snide comments aside, if you like this sound - and I know plenty of people out there that do - than Heavy Hearted would fit nicely in your collection of overwrought emotional hardcore bands.
