Last night, I got to see the great Infant Island play a sterile downtown Richmond bar and treat it like it was a sweaty basement, and a show like that one has me ready to evangelize for the screamo underground. (Infant Island’s tour with Greet Death still has a bunch of dates left, and if one of those dates is in your town, you should really go.) Fortunately, there’s new screamo music coming out all the time, and Houston’s Overo put out an especially lovely new album yesterday.

Overo have a stately, majestic take on screamo. They’re not even all that screamy; at times, the band recalls the ’90s moments before the term “screamo” really took off and when people were just as likely to say “emotional hardcore” as “emo.” Overo’s new album Waiting For The End To Begin follows the band’s 2019 self-titled full-length, as well as assorted splits and other releases. Waiting For The End To Begin is a fully DIY effort, but it’s also vast and ambitious, full of extra touches like horns and strings and spoken-word interludes. It’s often very, very pretty.

Two members of Overo, singer/guitarist Lindsay Minton and bassist Mercy Harper, also play in football, etc., the Houston band who released the impressive J. Robbins-produced EP Vision a couple of weeks ago. In Overo, Minton’s plaintive howl combines powerfully with the wracked roar of Brendan Stephens, the band’s other guitarist, in ways that recall prime Rainer Maria, a band that Overo have covered. Overo have lots of gorgeous quiet moments, but when it’s time to bring the thunder, they can really do that, too. Waiting For The End To Begin is just a really cool record, and you can stream it below.

Waiting For The End To Begin is out now on Middle Man Records.