Overcome

When Beauty Dies (Tooth & Nail)
by Doug Sery

Expecting the worst (hey, I’m human), I began my foray into “xian” hardcore. With the opening notes of “A Case for Life” from Arizona’s Overcome, I realized that this is no ordinary church choir. Wielding their twin scepters of righteousness for the Lord, guitarists Reggie Shumway and Jason Obergfoll back up vocalist Jason Stinson like Jimmy Swaggart healing some poor soul at an Alabama revival meeting. Except no one’s fallin’ down here. Hoo-wee, these fellers can punch out a tune! Ten (plus the now obligatory bonus-track) pounding psalms to the glories of moral Christian life… and there’s the rub. In “Human Equality,” they complain that “You wouldn’t risk hurting your reputation to come and talk to me/ So you run your mouth like you know what we’re about/ Never willing to sit and work things out.” Great idea, if you’re willing to practice it, but they don’t. In the now-familiar litany of the Christian-Right, we are instead subjected to their whining supplications to God to save them from the evil temptations threatening to lead them astray from the “God that reigns forever” (“Hebron”); the evils of promiscuity and pornography (“When Beauty Dies”); comparing abortions to the Holocaust (“A Case for Life”); the list goes on.