Overmars

Emerging from Lyon, France, Overmars entered the post-metal realm through a series of split EPs that first surfaced in 2002. Their debut full-length, Affliction, Endocrine...Vertigo, arrived in 2005 and immediately set them apart with a suffocating, sustained, and frequently sludgy approach to the style. At that stage the group comprised vocalist Xavier, guitarists Antoine and Pierrick, keyboardist Bruno, bassist Marrion, and drummer Ben. The ensemble’s expansive outlook produced an even bolder statement on the 2007 follow-up Born Again, which unfolded as one continuous forty-minute composition whose difficulty rivaled anything the post-metal community had encountered by then. The ensuing twelve months brought both a new split EP, shared with Icos, and the standalone EP Büccolision. More recent accounts, however, indicated that the band had contracted to a quartet, raising uncertainty about its subsequent direction.